Group items tagged

A proposal that college curricula should more fully and more intentionally take advantage of the college's physical locations and the moment in time. What surprises me is how relatively easy to incorporate some of the ideas seem.

A degree-planning tool gives a student personalized guidance in choosing paths through the curriculum and potentially the co-curriculum. While this brief focuses on planning tools as they improve student retention, they are also powerful tools for helping students see coherent themes in a liberal arts education.

The new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy gives a higher priority to understanding how knowledge is produced and shared. This article discusses ways that could play out in the design of library services. How could it affect your course and curriculum design?

A thought experiment about the risks of change and stasis in the college curriculum.

This paper serves as a guide to starting a portfolio project. It focuses on the "learning portfolio" as a tool which encourages the student to reflect on their own learning, with special attention to their own progress. I was particularly taken with the point that a portfolio can be an appropriate tool at any level of the curriculum - an individual course or set of courses, the program or department level, or the whole institution - though of course, that choice will change the purpose of the portfolio, and therefore its design.

Great news about student resistance to active learning. Have the courage of your convictions!

I'm not entirely sure that a single grand unified theory of learning will be as useful as the author thinks it is, but certainly more familiarity with existing theories of learning and the connections between them can be a powerful tool as we refine courses and curriculum.

As we think about the role of sustainability for the College and our curriculum, this panel discussion on addressing environmental justice in the curriculum makes for good listening.

Thomas Carey argues that "depth vs. breadth" is an insufficient model for understanding the possible contributions of the liberal arts. (Plus, K is for Kenyon, that's good enough for me.)

Interesting attempt to measure the growth of professionally-oriented courses at liberal arts schools, and some good reporting to contextualize the changes.

A bibliography on service learning in the mathematics curriculum from the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. One of the resources from this summer's institute on service learning.

"A meta-analysis of 62 studies involving 11,837 students indicated that... students participating in SL programs demonstrated significant gains in five outcome areas: attitudes toward self, attitudes toward school and learning, civic engagement, social skills, and academic performance. ... Furthermore, as predicted, there was empirical support for the position that following certain recommended practices--such as linking to curriculum, voice, community involvement, and reflection--was associated with better outcomes." (This link requires Kenyon authentication; the full citation is doi: 10.1177/105382591103400205 Journal of Experiential Education September/October 2011 vol. 34 no. 2 164-181.)

This essay describes the need to make room for moral complexity in the college classroom and the potential to engage students with ethical questions across the curriculum.

"This edited book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology." This is a free e-book, published by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association.

"This edited book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology." This is a free e-book, published by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association.

An interesting approach to the way an institution's design affects the kind of education it delivers. Considering Kenyon's ongoing consideration of general education requirements, I'll exerpt here the last paragraph as a prompt for discussion: "General education is often thought of as a means to expose students to a broad range of "essential" knowledge and to provide a historical context for the culture in which they live. These are valid, but insufficient, goals. The purpose of general education should be to produce graduates who are skilled in communication, imbued with quantitative reasoning skills, instinctively collaborative, inherently transdisciplinary in their approach to problems, and engaged in their local and global communities-broadly educated individuals with an informed perspective on the problems of the 21st century and the integrative abilities to solve them."

"Assessing assessment" seems painfully meta, but we spend enough energy on our departmental reviews that we should ensure the process is useful. This article asks 14 questions in order to help guide thinking about whether an assessment plan is currently successful. The questions asked focus more on the students' learning outcomes rather than indirect measures of institutional efficiency.

"Assessing assessment" seems painfully meta, but we spend enough energy on our departmental reviews that we should ensure the process is useful. This article asks 14 questions in order to help guide thinking about whether an assessment plan is currently successful. The questions asked focus more on the students' learning outcomes rather than indirect measures of institutional efficiency.

Interesting contrarian article from Alfie Kohn, pointing out that too much focus on "growth mindset" might be a way to sidestep larger questions of curriculum, pedagogy, and the social structures of education.

By building an open, multi-disciplinary collection of SMART recipes (Simple, Modular, Assessable, Reproducible,and Tested) that could be integrated into any curriculum, we intend to bring information literacy to the forefront of liberal arts education.