Making General Education Matter

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Making General Education Matter

• Keynote Presentation at the University of North
  Dakota
• August 26, 2005
• Peggy Maki--PeggyMaki_at_aol.com

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Higher educations expectations for GE

• Integrate
• Apply
• Synthesize
• Transfer
• Analyze
• Interpret
• Reflect on what they do and dont understand
  along the continuum of their learning
• Re-use learning
• Re-position their understanding

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Foci

• Focusing on learning
• Collaborative mapping of GE learning outcomes in
  the curricular-co-curricular fabric that
  contributes to students learning
• Assessing GE learning in both GE courses and in
  students major program of study

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List Strategies You Use to Learn

• ________________________
• ________________________
• ________________________
• ________________________

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Learning.

• Learning is a complex process of
  interpretation-not a linear process
• Learners create meaning as opposed to receive
  meaning
• Knowledge is socially constructed (importance of
  peer-to-peer interaction)
• National Research Council. Knowing What Students
  Know, 2001.

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• People learn differentlyprefer certain ways of
  learning (learning inventories)
• Deep learning occurs over timetransference
• Meta-cognitive processes are a significant means
  of reinforcing learning (thinking about ones
  thinking or ways of knowing)

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• Learning involves creating relationships between
  short-term and long-term memory
• Transfer of new knowledge into different
  contexts deepens understanding--thus the need to
  reinforce GE learning outcomes along the
  continuum of students studies

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Specific Questions that Guide GE Assessment

• What do you expect your students to demonstrate,
  represent, or produce by the end of their
  education at your institution?
• What do the curricula and other educational
  experiences add up to?

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Questions (cond)

• What do you do in your classes or in your
  programs to promote the kinds of learning or
  development that the institution seeks?
• Which students benefit from various classroom
  teaching strategies or educational experiences?
• What educational processes are responsible for
  the GE outcomes the institution seeks?

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Questions, cond

• How can you help students make connections
  between classroom learning and experiences
  outside of the classroom?
• What pedagogies/educational experiences, or
  educational tools develop knowledge, abilities,
  habits of mind, ways of knowing/problem solving?
• How are curricula and pedagogy designed to
  develop knowledge, abilities, habits of mind,
  ways of knowing?

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• How do you intentionally build upon what each of
  you teaches or fosters to achieve GE learning
  outcomes--contexts for learning?
• What methods of assessment capture desired
  student learning--methods that align with
  pedagogy, content, curricular and instructional
  design?

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Integrated Learning.
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Levels of Learning Outcome Statements
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Assessment as Inquiry into Educational Practices

• Pedagogy
• Curricular design
• Instructional design
• Educational tools
• Educational experiences
• Students learning histories/styles

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What Tasks Elicit Students Demonstration of
their GE Learning?

• Tasks that require students to select among
  possible answers (multiple choice test)?
• Tasks that require students to construct answers
  (students problem-solving and thinking
  abilities)?

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Mapping a Learning Outcome within the Context of
Teaching and Learning
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Assessment Methods that Shape and Chronicle
Student Learning

• Every assessment is also based on a set of
  beliefs about the kinds of tasks or situations
  that will prompt students to say, do, or create
  something that demonstrates important knowledge
  and skills. The tasks to which students are asked
  to respond on an assessment are not arbitrary.
• National Research Council., p. 47.

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• Design Principles

Assumptions Underlying Teaching
Actual Practices
Assumptions Underlying Assessment Tasks
Actual Tasks
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Characteristics of GE Assessment Methods

• Integrated along the continuum of students
  learning to routinely prompt students to draw on
  their GE courses and related learning experiences
• Designed to position students to see learning as
  relevant, emerging, subject to change or revision
  based on new knowledge, perspectives, and
  understanding

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• Focused on complex as opposed to simple
  problems/issues rich, dynamic, muddy,
  interdisciplinary

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Methods Position Students

• Reuse and reconfigure what they have learned,
  leading to deeper or even new understanding,
  perspectives, ways of problem-solving
• Value interdependence among courses and
  experiences
• Self-reflect on their emerging learning

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Possible Methods

• A case study or case studies over time as
  students move through courses and educational
  experiences
• Virtual simulations or scenarios
• Computer modeling
• Storyboarding
• Logbook or journal tasks that explore a complex
  problem over time

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• Mind mapping, concept mapping, or other visual
  representation (3-D)
• Critical events/situations along the continuum of
  learning
• Self-directed group projects (personal and
  annotated websites)

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• Mining and interpreting learning objects
  (artifacts)
• Developing of a model that is then executed
  (artists maquettes)
• Presenting problems with solutions. Are there
  other solutions?

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• Seeking shifted perspectives on a
  problem/issuefine-tuned view versus maco-view (
  a la Lewis Thomas)
• Lab work/field work/service learning projects

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• Chronological task that challenges students to
  construct meaning over time--from remembering set
  solutions to applying to a new situation
• Magic box

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• Inclusion of self-reflection analysis of
  frameworks, perspectives, ways of knowing and
  problem solving, and actions or decisions as part
  of assessment methods.
• Creation of interdisciplinary teams
• that periodically work on a complex problem
  from orientation to graduation and track their
  chronological approaches to solving a problem.

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R.W. Emerson, Intellect, Essays (1841)

• How can we speak of the action of the mind
  under any divisions, as of its knowledge, of its
  ethics, of its works, and so forth, since it
  melts will into perception, knowledge into act?
  Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its
  vision is not like the vision of the eye, but is
  union with the things known.

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• What and how students learn depends to a
  major extent on how they think they will be
  assessed. Biggs, J., p. 141.

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Works Cited

• Biggs, J. (1999). Teaching for Quality Learning
  at University What The Student Does. Society
  for Research into Higher Education Open
  University Press, 1999, p. 141.
• Marton, F., Saljo, R. (1976). On Qualitative
  Differences in Learning IOutcome and Process.
  British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46,
  4-11.
• Marton, F., Saljo, R. (1976). On Qualitative
  Differences in Learning IIOutcome and Process.
  British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46,
  115-127.
• National Research Council. (2001). Knowing What
  Students Know The Science and Design of
  Educational Assessment. Washington, D.C.
  National Academy Press, 47.