Let's Redesign Curriculum: Gen Eds

[Wahoo Redux]

There is a great deal of discussion about moribund gen eds.  Usually these strike me as high on moralistic rhetoric ("No more silos! Won't someone please think of the children!?") and low on the actual, ground-level changes that should take place.

Everyone here is a subject-area expert.  What do you think should

a) be included from your area-of-expertise in gen eds and, most importantly, what should these classes entail, and/or...

b) be included to help students who are majoring in your area-of-expertise.  And...

c) maybe we could include classes / disciplines which are being attenuated or even dropped but should still maintain a place in gen eds.


I'll start, in reverse order:

c) Attenuated but Necessary: Philosophy and foreign languages (in some non-siloed form).  I understand that there are not a lot of corporate jobs for "philosophers" and that 18 months at 3 hours a week of language instruction does not teach one to speak Italian or whatever, but I believe both classes are fantastic for challenging the brain and actually teaching students new ways of thinking.

History is absolutely necessary for English majors.  I would suggest it should be front-and-center for ALL majors, particularly given what we have seen in the last 5 years.

b) Classes Your Majors Need: English(writing & literature) majors learn a great deal from the above classes, and history, film studies (if not already English), art-history, sociology and psychology (all non-siloed) provide important non-major-curriculum ideas. 

a) Should Be Included to Annoy Anti-Gen-Ed-ers: writing courses, obviously.  First semester: academic conventions (research, databases, citation styles, grammar, argumentation & basic academic research paper formats).   Second semester: major specific writing (business, science, close-reading literature, history-specific, etc.).  Intro to journalism might be an option for 2nd semester for all students since journalism can teach many of these skills.

I still think literature has its place in every students' training, but I'll leave that for now.

d) The Non-Nuclear-Silo Option: We might also include how these classes can be "non-siloed."

For second semester writing I would suggest that students be tasked with actually researching and writing something live from their own disciplines.  For instance, business writers would need to research a local business and place it in context of the town, region, and industry and put it in context of another discipline such as psychology of leadership, moral philosophy, or industrial history.  Science writers...well, something sciencey; perhaps describing a wetlands in historical or ethical or business-related context (I'm not knowledgeable enough to conjecture).  Literature majors could, perhaps, do primary research on local urban legends and put them into context of literary paradigms.  You get the picture...

Also, I love the idea of a "science literacy" class----although I am not sure exactly what that is...which might be a great argument for just such a class.

Any ideas?

[Wahoo Redux]

Oh yeah.

Do we have any colleges which have actually done some sort of gen ed conversion or adjustment or are in the process of doing so and have some sort of publicity to explain what they have done so we can see?

[mahagonny]

I am not telling you my field. I am much too famous to take the risk of having my identity discovered (like, in my dreams, but better safe than sorry).

Speaking of community colleges and non-elite post secondary education:
Too many still don't get such things as 'there, they're and their.' Poor writing is poor thinking. I learned it in seventh grade and am less formally educated than most academics, and many whites are guilty, so it's not a white privilege thing. Unless one is dyslexic, it's not an aptitude thing. It's a giving-out-passing-grades-that-weren't-earned thing. Time to clean the clock once and for all. So I guess I'm saying rather than redesign the curriculum in use, enforce the standards that we've been purporting to have.

[Wahoo Redux]

Oh, oh yeah.

A little while ago Polly posted a link to an article about how colleges should redesign and reinvigorate themselves by becoming actual agents in their communities, not just sites of instruction.

I would argue that higher ed is absolutely a vital, interactive agent in our communities for all sorts of reasons, but we'll go with it.

How can gen eds (or major curriculum) involve the universities in their communities?

For instance, 2nd semester writing might be a community newspaper researched and produced by students.  Local news is struggling----colleges could fill in the gap by having students actually produce documents the community would value.

2nd semester business writing could include brochures, press releases, manuals, and blogs for local businesses. 

You get the idea...

[mleok]

The problem is that there is a fundamental conflict of interest, as the people tasked with designing general education are primarily concerned about job security for instructors in their own narrow fields.

[ciao_yall]

There is a great deal of discussion about moribund gen eds.  Usually these strike me as high on moralistic rhetoric ("No more silos! Won't someone please think of the children!?") and low on the actual, ground-level changes that should take place.

Everyone here is a subject-area expert.  What do you think should

a) be included from your area-of-expertise in gen eds and, most importantly, what should these classes entail, and/or...

b) be included to help students who are majoring in your area-of-expertise.  And...

c) maybe we could include classes / disciplines which are being attenuated or even dropped but should still maintain a place in gen eds.

Okay, I'll play. My field is Business.

a) I think everyone should take Introduction to Business just to understand what is meant by all the terms they hear, and also to realize how interconnected and complex their world actually is. They are wearing a shirt. What were all the things that had to happen to get that shirt on their bodies?

b) All Business students should take World History to have some sense of the how the world got to where it is, and how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

c) I can't think of any Gen Ed class that would not be of value to someone. That said, students can choose Gen Eds that are of interest to them. So it's good to be exposed to science, humanities, whatever, to learn about new ways of thinking, new cultural touchpoints, that will help them better understand their target credit cards with feet customers in one way or another.

[kiana]

What should not be in a gen ed curriculum? I'm going with "college algebra, as currently taught."

In pretty much any standard textbook, it's a somewhat disjointed (because of course you have to prepare so that sections don't depend on each other so you can capture the biggest market) collection of algorithms and concepts free of all context or applications designed around the idea that students are preparing for calculus. Students "learn" the difference quotient,which is presented primarily as a computational exercise that "you'll need in calculus" but see no connection to average rate of change, slope, or anything else. Students "learn" that to find a vertical asymptote you'll set the denominator = 0 and solve (we gloss over the 0/0 issue) but they can't tell you what it is, what it means, whether a function that models a real-life thing would have one or not, etc. Students "learn" to solve a system of equations with a matrix but nothing else, and they don't even learn "why would you want to do it that way"? And it is so packed full of topics that you literally can't get them to actually understand any of them beyond a "monkey-see-monkey-do" level, because you have one day to talk about them and then move on.

What should be there instead? For some degree programs college algebra is a gatekeeper that says "this person is at least somewhat numerate and can apply beginning/intermediate algebra". I'd like to see a significantly simplified course that focuses a lot less on getting ready for calculus and a lot MORE on using and applying what we DO learn, a lot more word problems, a lot more emphasis on "is this answer reasonable? How do we know?". I'd definitely include a significant amount of work on exponential growth and decay, and a hell of a lot more emphasis on actually understanding what a logarithm is and how it works rather than "split up this horrible expression using the rules of logarithms because we have to do that in calculus". What is log_2 7? Well I'd need a calculator to say for sure but I for damn sure know that it's between 2 and 3 but closer to 3.

Yes, this would require a separate course for people who actually ARE intending a STEM major, but I'm ok with that.

[marshwiggle]

Everyone here is a subject-area expert.  What do you think should

a) be included from your area-of-expertise in gen eds and, most importantly, what should these classes entail, and/or...

b) be included to help students who are majoring in your area-of-expertise.  And...

Even if I allow the merit of gen eds in principle, I strongly disagree that these two goals can be met by the same course. In other words, a course for majors is not a good choice for non-majors as well. It will either be at a level which will destroy non-majors, or it will be at a level which will bore majors to tears.

If people are majoring in a subject which they took in high school, they should have been in the top decile of their class in that subject in high school to be good enough to succeed.  For professional disciplines which didn't exist in high school, if there were highly pertinent prerequisites, (such as science classes for health science majors), they should similarly have performed in the top decile in those prerequisites.

Courses for non-majors should be specifically crafted for them to be useful for their lives, which will be different than for majors.

[mleok]

Even if I allow the merit of gen eds in principle, I strongly disagree that these two goals can be met by the same course. In other words, a course for majors is not a good choice for non-majors as well. It will either be at a level which will destroy non-majors, or it will be at a level which will bore majors to tears.

For me, it's not only a question of level of rigor and difficulty, but also of breadth. A course for non-majors should be far more broad, and superficial than a class intended for majors.

[Ruralguy]

if you are just going to go with standard courses to fulfill a check list, then I think probably an introductory math class of some sort and a lab science would be useful, but I think it might be better to design these together, at least for non-science majors. That is, make it non-slloed, and some sort if introduction to science. Perhaps it can rotate amongst topics, but should have a lab component, preferred if it isn't too canned.

Outside of my expertise, I think the one course most needed would be writing and probably also speaking.

[mleok]

if you are just going to go with standard courses to fulfill a check list, then I think probably an introductory math class of some sort and a lab science would be useful, but I think it might be better to design these together, at least for non-science majors. That is, make it non-slloed, and some sort if introduction to science. Perhaps it can rotate amongst topics, but should have a lab component, preferred if it isn't too canned.

Outside of my expertise, I think the one course most needed would be writing and probably also speaking.

Maybe a probability/statistics class, tied with a lab science, showing how it informs the hypothesis testing and the role it plays in the scientific method. To be honest, for a non-STEM major, probability/statistics is probably more critical than the standard calculus sequence (at least the part which focuses on the bag of tricks for integration).

[marshwiggle]

if you are just going to go with standard courses to fulfill a check list, then I think probably an introductory math class of some sort and a lab science would be useful, but I think it might be better to design these together, at least for non-science majors. That is, make it non-slloed, and some sort if introduction to science. Perhaps it can rotate amongst topics, but should have a lab component, preferred if it isn't too canned.

Outside of my expertise, I think the one course most needed would be writing and probably also speaking.

Maybe a probability/statistics class, tied with a lab science, showing how it informs the hypothesis testing and the role it plays in the scientific method. To be honest, for a non-STEM major, probability/statistics is probably more critical than the standard calculus sequence (at least the part which focuses on the bag of tricks for integration).

Probably a decade or so my daughter pointed out that Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica, made this specific argument. I thought it made a lot of sense.

[Hegemony]

What should not be in a gen ed curriculum? I'm going with "college algebra, as currently taught."

My university does not have a math requirement. They were thinking about adding one. I single-handedly shut that down at the meeting at which it was brought up. I am a well-rounded individual; I do my own taxes. I have never needed math beyond the high school level. (In fact beyond the level of math taught to sophomores at a bad high school.) My undergraduate college, thank heavens, though it was an "elite" college, did not have a math requirement. In fact that's one reason I chose it over another "elite" offer. And no one has ever said to me, "Hegemony, your thinking is fairly good, but it would be so much more logical and disciplined if you'd only taken college-level math."

I'm all for required classes in History and basic science and so on. But math? As you can see, I think college classes in math, for those who don't use math in their fields, are pointless.

[mleok]

Probably a decade or so my daughter pointed out that Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica, made this specific argument. I thought it made a lot of sense.

I have a friend who developed a calculus sequence, where in lieu of the bag of tricks, just focused on Taylor expansions, and approached integration by the term by term integration of the Taylor expansion. This has the added benefit of introducing the students to the notion of approximation. To be honest, even for STEM majors, the current lower-division math sequence needs to be seriously reenvisioned, by abandoning the aspects which no longer make sense in light of dramatic advances in computer algebra systems, and perhaps incorporating more aspects of numerical linear algebra for large scale problems, approximation and interpolation, etc.

[Ruralguy]

My school settled on a general sort of introduction to how math is used in every day sort of endeavors  as a non-majors class, and then majors that needed stats, calc, or both, could use those to satisfy the requirement instead of the general class.

The "you'll never need it" argument can be used to eliminate everything save for basic composition.