Integrating Student Learning and Pedagogies Across the Professional Studies/General Education Divide: Re-engineering a Liberal Education Capstone CoursePhiladelphia University
International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and LearningCommitment, Community and CollaborationVancouver, British Columbia, CanadaSunday, October 16th, 2005
Susan Frosten, Associate Professor of ArchitectureMarion Roydhouse, Dean, School of Liberal ArtsTom Schrand, Associate Professor of History
Philadelphia University
• Founded in 1884 as Philadelphia Textile School
• Currently: 40+ professional majors – architecture to conservation biology
• Mission: “founded to raise the art and technology of the textile industry to international standards… [offers a] unique blending of the liberal arts and sciences with professional studies”
Curricular origins and evolution
• Middle States report inspired new general education curriculum (1986)
• FIPSE grant to develop interdisciplinary learning across three years (1993-1995)
• Development of College Studies program and liberal-professional education (1991-present)
Assessment and its impact
• Ongoing assessment drives change: 1993 to 2005
• Qualitative outcomes assessment
• Driven by examination of student work
• Unique capstone connects liberal arts/ professional majors to develop integrative learning.
Arts and Cultures(1 course total)
Year Four
Foreign Languages (may be taken any year) OR
Area Studies (taken in Years Two or Three): 2 courses total
Writing II
Arts and Cultures: 1 course
Contemporary Perspectives
Social Sciences I
Humanities I
Level II (Humanities, Historical Understanding, and Social Sciences II): 2 courses total
Quantitative Reasoning I and II: 2 courses
Science I and II: 2 courses
Writing I
Historical Understanding I
Foreign Languages and Area Studies(2 courses total)
Writing, History, Social Sciences, Humanities(8 courses total)
Quantitative Reasoning and Sciences(4 courses total)
Year Two Year ThreeYear One
College Studies Program sequences- arrows show prerequisites
Capstone course with liberal-professional themes
• General education capstone: “Contemporary Perspectives”– Explores current global trends and issues– Focuses on liberal-professional integration– Taught by liberal arts faculty– Culminates in advanced research project
linking global issues to students’ career fields
Capstone student project
• The “seminar paper” – 12-15 page academic research paper with 3
components:• Analysis of a major global trend• Examination of trend’s impact on student’s
professional field• Case study: example of the global trend
interacting with professional issues in a specific foreign country
Global (or regional) trend:
Big, free-standing topic, independent of your profession
Impact on profession:
How is this trend creating changes in your profession (find the overlap with global trend)
Case study:
An example of your trend affecting your profession in a specific foreign country (find the overlap with the previous two topics)
Entire global trend
Your entire professional field
Foreign country
Topic example
Global trend: Increasing water scarcity and pollution worldwide(change over time on a global or regional scale)
Professional impact:Increasing pressure on textile industry to reduce water use and pollution
Case study:Textile industry in Turkey responding to issues of water use
Capstone project assessment
• Formal departmental assessment (1996)• “Liberal-Professional Scholarship Awards”
(1999 - present)– Outstanding student projects nominated from
each professional program– Projects read and scored by capstone faculty
and faculty in the professional programs– Award meeting held with both professional
and liberal arts faculty to discuss projects and choose winners
Capstone assessment results
• Assignment was overly structured?• Liberal-professional integration could be
uneven or mechanical • Assignment emphasized traditional “scholarly”
research, “liberal arts” skills and content• Some professional faculty seemed
uncomfortable• Assessment conclusions:
– Can the integration be deeper, more authentic?– Can the assignment require more professional skills
and knowledge?
Experiment: problem-based learning
• The problem-based learning (PBL) assignment: – Students identify a “problem” related to their
profession in a specific world region– Develop a scenario that places them in a
realistic professional role– Play out the scenario to produce a
professionally-appropriate response (the “deliverable”)
PBL assessment
• Liberal arts faculty felt under-qualified to critique “professional” work
• Professional faculty supportive?
• Integrative PBL assignment “disoriented” students
Analyzing our “integration anxiety”
• Professional format of “deliverables” created faculty anxieties about content: “That’s not my field”
• Integrative Learning Project helped us consider deeper questions:– Do we understand how knowledge is constructed and
student learning is demonstrated in different professional disciplines?
– How would these be different when the goal is liberal-professional integration?
– Must disciplinary differences in pedagogy and epistemology be addressed?
Assessment from the professional perspective
• Architecture as intrinsically “integrative”
• Concerns with the “traditional” capstone assignment
• Intrigued by the PBL experiment
• Examining the South Africa HIV/AIDS student project
Integration and pedagogy
• Could we achieve our integrative student learning goals without the final design piece?
• Pedagogical questions:– When and how does the student learning take place
in different disciplines?– Is there any common ground between pedagogies
and student learning across professional disciplines and the liberal arts?
– Should we be examining the “signature pedagogies” that shape student learning in different professional fields?
Pedagogies and performances
Liberal arts• Seminar: lectures, group
discussions around common readings, little individual interaction
• Isolation during production (solo research and writing)
• Written performance• Private presentation of written
deliverable• Private, written evaluation
Emphasis: written and private communication
Architecture• Studio: involves individual and
group interaction, including lectures and seminar discussions
• Interaction during production (studio, desk crits)
• Visual performance• Public, oral presentation of visual
deliverable• Public, oral evaluation, followed
by private, individual evaluation
Emphasis: visual and public communication
Comparing pedagogies and performances
Similarities:Seminar and studio formats both • encourage interaction between the students as a group
and the instructor• involve individual performances Differences:• Written vs. visual communication• Interaction vs. isolation• Private vs. public performance• Amount of individual interaction• Analysis vs. practice
Comparing processes for creating “deliverables”
Liberal Arts• Assignment: topic is given or
discovered• Research: academic
• Analysis• Conclusions based on evidence
from research and analysis related to the defined problem
• Deliverable = research paper• Purpose: conclusions presented,
hypotheses evaluated
Architecture• Assignment: design problem is
posed• Research: academic,
programmatic, precedent, and site context
• Analysis• Definition of design parameters
based on conclusions substantiated by research and analysis
• Setting the criteria for design• Deliverable = design• Purpose: solution proposed for
design problem
The critical middle
• Despite differences, both pedagogies have distinct stages as performances are created
Research
Information gathering
Exploring context
Conclusions
Performance
Design
Analysis
Evaluation
Connections
Integration
• The middle stage is where we find the most commonality between fields
• It’s also where students have the hardest time
Next steps: pursuing the “signature pedagogies” question
• Workshops for the fall semester: faculty in the liberal arts and professional majors analyzing their different pedagogies
• Assessment of fall semester projects with the workshop faculty
• Questions to be examined:– Can we (faculty AND students) recognize parallels between the
distinct pedagogies, performances and deliverables?– Do we agree that the middle stage is a place where subject
matter expertise is less relevant, and critical integrative thinking skills are universally applicable?
– Should the capstone assignment place a special emphasis on this middle stage, to reduce the anxieties created by different “deliverables” and the pedagogies that shape them?
Ongoing research questions
• Can a focus on “signature pedagogies” help resolve the dilemmas of integrative learning?
• Can problem-based learning encourage more integration across the liberal-professional divide?
Susan Frosten, Associate Professor of Architecture [email protected]
Marion Roydhouse, Dean, School of Liberal Arts [email protected]
Tom Schrand, Associate Professor of [email protected]
Organizing Your Seminar Paper The material below is intended to help you structure the research and writing of your seminar paper. The suggested topics are not mandatory for every paper, but the papers that successfully fulfill this assignment generally provide the type of information described on this sheet. Guidelines for writing Section II In Section II (Global Trend) you should:
identify and briefly explain the immediate conditions/forces/changes that have given rise to the trend
describe the magnitude or scope of the trend, preferably by using a variety of indicators (number of
countries or areas affected, amount of world population, or capital, or vital natural or cultural resources involved, etc.)
explain who ( i.e., countries, institutions, industries, etc.) supports the trend, why they support it,
and how they have demonstrated their support
explain who ( i.e., countries, institutions, industries, etc.) opposes the trend, why they oppose it, and how they have demonstrated their opposition
briefly describe and assess the impact of the trend
Guidelines for writing Section III In Section III (Impact on Your Profession), you should think about and research several ways in which your chosen global trend has impacted/is impacting on your profession, including (but not limited to) the following:
how the global trend has affected the core knowledge/philosophy on which the profession is grounded
how the global trend has affected the prestige of the profession and/or its relation to other
professional fields
how the global trend has affected conduct of the profession
how the global trend has affected employment in the profession
how the global trend has affected morale within the profession
how the global trend has affected the training of new recruits to the profession Guidelines for writing Section IV In Section IV (Case Study), you should analyze the impact of your global/regional trend on your profession as it is practiced in a specific country outside of the United States.