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Project Motivation I regularly teach a course that satisfies the above definition of a 'common' course at Wabash College. The course is called Cultures&Traditions, or C&T, and it raises a host of issues on campus. As an institution, we feel that the common experience engendered in C&T is valuable and indeed crucial to the education of our students. However, it takes a large amount of energy and will on the part of the faculty to teach, revise, and govern this course. Simply put, it is not easy to acheive consensus among the faculty on what we should cover and how we should cover it. Having seen the constant effor tthat it takes to make such a course happen, I wondered what kinds of models were out there for how to operate such courses. So I went looking for institutions with traditional curriculums that had decided to invest some of their institutional energy in creating and teaching a transdisciplinary, common syllabus course. The results of my investigation form this project.
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Related Work A similar study involving the Gen.Ed/Distribution requirements at a large number of institutions was recently completed by the ACTC (Association of Core Texts and Courses). This study was part of a FIPSE Grant. The title and authors are below: Assessing Trends in Liberal Arts Core: A Visions For The 21st Century by J. Scott Lee and George R. Lucas, Jr. For more information, please see the American Academy for Liberal Education (AALE) at: http://www.aale.org/fipse.htm
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Results Let me begin by urging the reader to look at the report and the tables (both at web-site) for a fuller statement of results. However, I will highlight a few of the trends that I saw in the survey responses: - 80% of respondents had one- or two-semester sequences
- 85% of sequences began in the freshman year
- Directors indicated that the skill goals of these courses were generally to improve reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking.
- 75% of sequences used primary texts for the majority of materials.
- Governance often relies on a director for day-to-day issues and faculty committees for structural/content issues.
- Schools with sequences of 4 to 8 semesters exhibited far more similarities than other schools.
- Though a large fraction of departments are involved in teaching these courses, a far smaller fraction of professors are involved, indicating many sequences are staffed by a small, departmentally diverse, and dedicated cadre of instructors.
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Teaching/Learning Implications It is my hope that my project will be useful to two rather distinct audiences: 1. To institutions that currently have 'common' sequences - I hope my project will provide a source of information concerning how other schools run their 'common' sequences. This information may point directors towards ways of improving their 'common' sequence and may facilitate communication between these institutions. 2. To institutions that do not have 'common' sequences - I hope my project provides a good starting point in examining how such a sequence could be implemented at their institution as well as providing 20 different models for how and why it can and should be done.
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Challenges The single biggest challenge I faced was finding schools that had these sttrange beasts within their curriculum. People seem to know about them via word of mouth, but there seems to be no single meeting place for these types of courses. My solution was laborious - a great deal of internet searches and phoning a lot of deans and registrars in search of such courses. I fear that I may not have found all such courses that are actually present in my two sample pools, but I do feel I found most of them.
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