Making the LEAP: Connecting Liberal Education with 21 st Century Challenges

Making the LEAP: Connecting Liberal Education with 21st Century Challenges 2013 Institute on Integrative Learning and the Departments Opening Plenary July 10, 2013

Integrative Learning and the Work of the Department: • Definitions and Contexts • The Learning Students Need • Goals • Priorities • Assessments • Implications for Departments and Programs

Definitions • Liberal Arts and Sciences • General Education • Liberal Education

Context:Changing Designs for College Learning The Nineteenth Century College The Twentieth Century University A Common Core Curriculum (All learning is both “general and liberal education”) Breadth + Depth (Breadth = General Studies; Depth = Majors; “liberal education” becomes synonymous with “general education”)

Context:Changing Designs for College Learning The Twenty-First Century Academy • A Curriculum in Transition: • Rethinking educational purposes and practices to better prepare all students for • complexity and contingency • global interdependence • innovation in the workplace • diverse democracy

How Do We Prepare Students for Twenty-First Century Realities? 2000-2005 – Greater Expectations – A National Dialogue About Purposes and Effective Practices in College Learning 2005-Present – Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) A Signature Initiative to Advance Intentional and Integrative Learning for Today’s Students

The National and Global Discussion About the Quality of College Learning—and Whether Graduates Are Actually Prepared for 21st Century Realities—Is Accelerating LEAP Frames That Dialogue

The Key Components in a 21st Century Framework for Liberal Education and Inclusive Excellence • New Clarity About the Learning Outcomes Students Need—for Work, Life, and Citizenship • New Intentionality about Practices that Help Students Achieve the Expected Learning • A New Focus on Students’ Own Authentic Work—As the Best and Most Compelling Evidence on their Progress, Proficiency, and Cumulative Achievement

The Long-Term LEAP Goal is to Make Excellence Inclusive, Not Exclusive, By Giving Students a Powerful Framework for Intentional and Integrative Learning

T The LEAP Essential Aims and Outcomes • Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World • Intellectual and Practical Skills • Personal and Social Responsibility • Integrative and Applied Learning Narrow Learning Is Not Enough!

The Essential Learning Outcomes Provide: • A Common Integrative Framework for Learning Within and Across Disciplinary Boundaries • A Common Point of Departure for Professional Fields AND the Liberal Arts and Sciences • Transparent Connections Between General Education and Majors • Guidance for Students Navigating Multiple Fields of Study and Institutions

The LEAP Essential Aims and Outcomes • The First Three Outcomes Build from the Traditional Strengths of the Liberal Arts and Sciences: • Broad Knowledge • Reasoned Judgment • Civic and Ethical Formation

The LEAP Essential Aims and Outcomes (cont.) • The Fourth LEAP Outcome—Integrative and Applied Learning—Is What Makes the Vision So Applicable to 21st Century Realties • In a Fluid, Volatile, Fast-Changing Workplace – ALL Students Must Have Extensive and Active Practice ADAPTING their Skills and Knowledge to New, Unscripted Problems and Challenges

The Essential Learning Outcomes Help Us Break Free of the Old Breadth-Depth Division of Curricular Labor

The ELOs Help Us “Make the LEAP” to New Designs for Cross-Disciplinary, Problem-Centered, Integrative Learning, Culminating in the Final Years of College

The Outcomes Can Be Used at Multiple Levels: • For a Department’s Own Review of Intended Learning Outcomes (Good) • As a Shared Framework for Program Review of All Departmental Programs (Better) • To Create Clear Connections Between Campus-Wide Goals, Departmental Goals and Each Student’s Goals (Best)

Employers Strongly Endorse the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes – and Urge More Campus Emphasis on Them

The Lumina Foundation Also Drew From LEAP in drafting a proposed Degree Qualifications Profile Framework for: • AA • BA • MA (See Handout)

Helping Students Achieve Intended Learning Outcomes

In Brief: Departments are Ground Zero for Achieving the Essential Learning Outcomes General Education is Necessary – But Far From Sufficient

The Majors—ALL Majors—Play a Crucial Role in Helping Students Achieve 21st Century Liberal Education Outcomes

The Major Plays the Decisive Role in: • Developing intellectual and practical skills • Educating citizens for civic, intercultural and ethical responsibility • Teaching students to integrate and apply their learning

Integrative Liberal Learning and the Intentional Department: Aligning Outcomes with High Impact Practices

High Impact Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter by George D. Kuh (LEAP report, October 2008, www.aacu.org)

High Impact Practices • First-Year Seminars and Experiences • Common Intellectual Experiences • Learning Communities • Writing-Intensive Courses • Collaborative Assignments and Projects • “Science as Science Is Done”/Undergraduate Research • Diversity/Global Learning • Service Learning, Community-Based Learning • Internships • Capstone Courses and Projects

NSSE Research Shows That: • Higher Levels of Participation in High Impact Practices (HIPs) Correlate with • Higher Retention • Higher Grade Point Average • Higher Self-Reported Gains on Deep/Integrative Learning Scale • HIPs Offer “Compensatory Benefit” for Students from Less Advantaged Backgrounds and/or with Lower Entering Scores

Five High-Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality Lynn Swaner and Jayne Brownell (AAC&U, 2010, www.aacu.org) This Commissioned Review of Extant Research Shows that High Impact Practices DO Help Students Achieve Many “Essential Learning Outcomes”

Ensuring Quality & Taking High-Impact Practices to Scale, by George D. Kuh and Ken O’Donnell (AAC&U, 2013)

AAC&U’s Recommendation: To Foster Essential Learning Outcomes—Including Integrative and Applied Learning—Departments Should Map Appropriate High Impact Practices into the Expected Course of Study for the Major

Assessing Students’ Progress in Achieving Key Learning Outcomes “It’s not a multiple-choice world...”

And Therefore, We Need to: “Assess Students’ Ability to Apply Their Learning to Complex Problems” -LEAP Principle of Excellence #7

Programs That Foreground High Effort, High Impact Practices – e.g. Research, Internships, Capstones – Are Already Poised to Meet This Standard

Done Well, Assessment Itself Can Become a High Impact Educational Practice

The New Frontiers for the Department’s Work in Integrative Learning • A crucial shift from my course/my work to “our curriculum and our shared work” • Mapping intentional pathways that foster the expected learning – in ways appropriate to discipline and field • Seizing the opportunity of the digital revolution to put lectures online – and foreground students’ active, effortful practice in using rigorous, inquiry-based forms of learning

The New Frontiers for the Department’s Work in Integrative Learning (cont.) • Expecting students – yes, ALL students– to devote substantial time to significant, unscripted questions of their own choosing – and to demonstrate their ability to use research skills and evidenced-based reasoning to address those questions

The New Frontiers for the Department’s Work in Integrative Learning (cont.) • Creating rich opportunities for students and faculty to work together – across disciplinary and often institutional lines – on cross-disciplinary problems and challenges that are important to society – and crucial to the future role of the academy in a global community

In Sum • The Integrative Department Helps Students See What Matters in Their Studies • Provides Multiple Opportunities for Students to Meet Expected Standards—and to Do Their Best Work • Helps Students Prepare to Apply their Learning—Over a Lifetime—to New Problems, New Settings, New Challenges

Well-Designed Curricula—in Short—are the Key to Students’ Actual Achievement of Essential Learning Outcomes and an Integrative Liberal Education

And, Given the Complexity of 21st Century Realities, Nothing Less Will Do

Making the LEAP: Connecting Liberal Education with 21 st Century Challenges