Developing the ability to make, recognize,
and evaluate connections among disparate
concepts, fields, or contexts is what integrative
learning is all about. Breadth and depth of
learning remain hallmarks of a quality liberal
education. Yet, today, there's a growing consensus
that breadth and depth are not enough.
As Carol Geary Schneider, president of the
Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U), argues, educators are
taking seriously the fragmentation of
knowledge, not just in [their] courses, but
through the knowledge explosion in the
world around us. Many of the most interesting
educational innovations clearly are intended
to teach students what we might call
the new liberal art of integration. Not only
do these innovations invite students to integrate
learning from
different sources,
but they also provide models, frameworks,
and practice in actually doing so. (2004, 7)
To be sure, there's a sense in which all learning
is integrative, if only because new ideas
must somehow connect to prior ones. When
educators single out integrative learning for
special attention, however, they are usually
talking about larger leaps of imagination--about linking ideas and domains that are not
easily or typically connected. As a student in
a mathematics and English learning community
at the College of San Mateo observed, integrative
learning means "tying things
together that don't seem obvious."
How to help students tie things together is
the challenge. Most theories of intellectual
development construe the ability to integrate
knowledge as a relatively sophisticated skill,
which develops over time and requires
considerable effort and experience to attain.
For example, Benjamin Bloom (1956) placed
synthesis near the "top" of his Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives, and William Perry
(1998) thought that the capacity for synthesis
develops as students progress through varieties
of dualism (in which knowledge is basically
right or wrong) and relativism (in which a
number of legitimate ways of seeing the world
are recognized) to arrive, if they do, at commitment
in the face of uncertainty. Details of
particular typologies aside, it appears that students
need multiple opportunities to understand
and to practice the "integrative arts"
throughout their college years.
Strengthening integrative learning, then,
involves broad-based campus change. Although
the integrative arts can (and should)
be taught within particular courses, departments,
and institutional divisions, they cannot
by their very nature be pursued alone.
The most promising initiatives for integrative
learning are about finding strategic points of
connection, threading attention to integrative
learning throughout (and between) an
institution's various programs, and encouraging
and scaffolding students' own efforts to
connect the parts.
Fostering integrative learning
Fortunately, the higher education community
is gaining significant experience in fostering
integrative learning through changes in curricula,
pedagogy, assessment, and faculty
development. Consider, if you will, the experience
of the institutions that participated in
the national Integrative Learning Project (ILP),
sponsored by AAC&U and the Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching.
Aimed at promoting integrative learning in
undergraduate education, this three-year project
worked with ten campuses to develop and
assess advanced models and strategies to foster
students' abilities to integrate their learning
over time. We reported extensively on work
in progress in Peer Review (summer/fall 2005),
and have now had time to step back and
reflect on the work campus by campus and
across settings in our online public report
(www.carnegiefoundation.org/e-library/
integrativelearning).
Curriculum. The curriculum is an obvious
starting point for questions about opportunities
for synthesis: Where and when are students
asked to put the pieces together in order to better
understand or solve important problems?
Where and when are students encouraged to
make links among their academic, personal,
and community lives? To be sure, many students
already get opportunities for synthesis in some
of their courses, and in "enriching educational
experiences" (see the National Survey of Student
Engagement) such as community service
or volunteer work, lively interdisciplinary programs
and centers, or those honors programs
and learning communities that are accompanied
by special attention to academic advising,
cocurricular activities, and other student services.
While these kinds of courses, enrichment
experiences, and special programs increase the
chance that students will receive encouragement
and guidance for integrative learning,
many colleges and universities are trying to be
more intentional about building links into the
regular curriculum and creating opportunities
for all students to integrate their learning at
multiple points throughout their college careers.
For example, ILP campuses have focused energy
on key areas for curriculum integration.
These include extended core curricula; crossdisciplinary
learning communities; cross-cutting
skills, literacies, and learning outcomes; firstyear
initiatives; middle-year initiatives; efforts
to connect professional programs with general
education; and efforts to connect study abroad
programs with curricula.
Pedagogy. In the drive to help students develop
integrative habits of mind, it is important
to remember that the effectiveness of
curricular innovations depends on the pedagogies
that support them. Many familiar pedagogies can serve the goal of integrative learning.
Indeed, just about any format that allows
groups of students to turn their attention to
common problems, issues, themes, or tasks--
the seminar, for example--can prompt integrative
learning, if the topic if of sufficient
scope and interest to be elucidated by insights
from different disciplines and perspectives. Experiential
strategies, like service learning,
study abroad, or internships, invite students to
make connections between coursework and
community, theory and practice. Innovative
approaches using new media can relate objects
or texts to contexts, and enable creative simulations.
And there are emergent pedagogies,
which respond to unanticipated events (like
9/11), student interests, and other concerns.
All of these pedagogies share certain qualities.
They acknowledge the realities of a
changing world where disciplinary and curricular
isolation are neither feasible nor desirable.
They require (and develop) intellectual dexterity
on the part of both the teacher and the
student, as well as the ability to speak to, if not
from, a broad spectrum of knowledge and experience.
They also embrace a commitment to
creating time and space for dialogue and conflict.
As a result, these pedagogies necessitate a
more flexible approach to assessment, with
well-designed assignments throughout the
course, and multiple opportunities for structured
reflection to help students take a more
intentional approach to their own learning.
Several ILP campuses are experimenting with
the use of electronic portfolios as a way for students
to integrate their own learning, and two
(La Guardia and Portland State) have been
national leaders in the e-portfolio movement.
What is needed in teaching for integration,
above any particular pedagogy, is an intentional
approach. This means, first, designing
courses with integrative learning in mind, and
second, asking questions and gathering evidence
about the specific challenges and dilemmas
that students are facing as they develop
their capacities as integrative learners. (See,
for example, reports by the 2005 cohort of
Carnegie Scholars in the Carnegie Academy
for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.) But it also requires paying
close attention--as the ILP
campuses are doing--to integrative
learning when taking
up issues of curricular alignment,
program and campuslevel
assessment, and faculty
development. If integrative learning is only as
good as the pedagogy that supports it, then integrative
teaching will only be as successful as
the arrangements that make it possible and
make it work.
Assessment. Assessment is a particular challenge for integrative learning--as it is, we
might add, for other liberal education goals.
Although assessment practices in higher education
have advanced over the past two
decades, neither standardized tests (such as
ACT's Collegiate Assessment of Academic
Proficiency or ETS's Measure of Academic
Proficiency and Progress) nor surveys of student
opinion (like the National Survey of
Student Engagement) directly assess students'
integrative work. While some of the exercises
used for the Collegiate Learning Assessment
(a standardized qualitative exam) may require
integrative action, the test provides scores only
for critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and
written communication.
ILP participants have, over the past several
years, developed a collection of innovative
practices to assess--and foster--integrative
learning. Given that integrative learning can
be defined in a wide variety of ways, it is no
surprise that these locally invented assignments
and assessments vary according to each campus's
learning needs. One prime advantage of locally
developed assignments and assessments is the
enhanced likelihood that teaching and instruction
will be aligned intentionally to produce
quality learning and that the assessments
will have good validity.
Valid assessment can arise from careful consideration of the whole planning-teachinglearning-
assessment feedback cycle. Validity
depends upon asking students to complete a
task very similar to the experiences they had
leading up to the assessment. Those experiences
most often are class assignments. Assignments
should logically flow from the goals
set for student learning and allow sufficient
time and opportunity to learn. Goals depend
upon the definition of the outcome: complex
outcomes such as integrative learning, while
often difficult to define in
words, can also be defined operationally--
that is, by what
one does when engaged in the
outcome. So, by this logic, an
assignment can represent
nearly all of the learning cycle--operationally defining the outcome, advancing
learning toward goals established for
the outcome, producing material for formative
and summative assessment, and generating
data to improve future teaching and
learning. Indeed, because assignments can
and should be seen as a powerful (if underappreciated)
kind of assessment, the ten ILP
campuses have begun to see assignment design
as an especially promising site for work by
faculty, departments, and programs concerned
with integrative learning.
Faculty Development. With so much riding
on pedagogy and classroom-based assessment, campuses seriously committed to integrative
learning are putting in place not only relevant
experiences for students, but also opportunities
for faculty to develop the capacity for--and a
community around--integrative teaching. Indeed,
there are already many routes to this end.
On a growing number of campuses, centers for
teaching and learning offer workshops on
classroom approaches that promote connection
making, such as collaborative learning,
problem-based learning, service learning, and
the like. But serious commitment to integrative
learning for students requires something that
goes beyond what is usually meant by faculty
development, and involves efforts to create a
campus culture where a larger part of the academic
community (faculty, staff, and students)
are engaged in common integrative work.
Opportunities for faculty to develop more
integrative approaches can be found in work
on curriculum. On many campuses, general
education reform brings the community together
for tough but powerful conversations
about the goals of undergraduate education
and how students' experiences should (but often
do not) add up. Working together on key
moments of the curriculum (for example,
freshman year at the College of San Mateo)
provides more focused opportunities for goal
setting and design, while convening people to consider the effects of the curriculum can provide
valuable occasions to examine student
work (for example, examining sophomorewriting portfolios at Carleton College). Special
efforts, like the State University of New
York College at Oswego's Catalyst Project,
which explores students' perceptions of learning
from freshman orientation to senior year,
can also provide grist for lively discussion
among faculty about how students integrate
their experiences over time and what new interventions
could strengthen those experiences.
Of course, integration is not simply a matter
of capacity. One may have the skills and
know-how to connect ideas but not the inclination.
In this sense, integration is also a matter
of culture and values, and both students and
faculty are more likely to embrace integrative
thinking if the campus is a place where one
finds a lively exchange about big ideas and issues
that people care about--topics that call on
people to contribute different perspectives and
bring their varied expertise and experience to
bear in ways that create new understandings.
Lessons for leadership
As the participants in the Integrative Learning
Project can attest, a great deal can happen (and
fail to happen) in three years. On the one hand,
three years feels scarcely long enough to identify
leadership and establish the momentum necessary for lasting change. On the other hand, three
years is more than sufficient to encounter the
full array of obstacles to campus change: departure
of key faculty, shifting administrative priorities,
or declining funds, to mention just a few.
In light of these stubborn facts, what lessons
can we draw about leading campus change?
How can we best make sense of the complex
relationships between intention, practice, and
result that played out on each of the ten participating
campuses as they worked to create
more and better opportunities for students to
put together the various pieces of their undergraduate
experience?
Make integrative learning a campus-wide
concern. Individual faculty members can do
much to strengthen integrative learning
through decisions about course design, pedagogy,
and assignments. But individual efforts,
by themselves, cannot create and sustain the
opportunities students need to develop as integrative
thinkers over the full arc of their
college careers. For this to happen, collaborative
efforts at the campus, program, and
departmental levels are needed, both to introduce
new practices where necessary, and to
ensure that programs already in place reinforce
and build on one another. It may be necessary
to start with a small group of colleagues in a
relatively modest way, while keeping one's eyes open for larger opportunities. Articulating
a vision that connects integrative learning
to important institutional goals can attract
people from different walks of campus life and
can help a campus obtain "buy-in," create
alliances, and marshal resources for successful
initiatives.
Design initiatives strategically. There are
many ways to strengthen the integrative potential
of the undergraduate experience, from
approaches that focus on the structure of the
curriculum to those that give students the
tools to connect their academic learning with
their lives. Which ones make the most sense
for any particular institution depends on what
is already happening there, as well as on the
strength of campus commitment to integrative
learning as an educational goal. Finding
out where and when integrative learning is
(and is not) currently taking place can help
identify strategic sites for new initiatives, reveal
points of overlap to nurture, and discover
gaps to fill. Examining successful work in
these areas at your own or another institution
can provide "existence proofs" and design
principles for your own initiatives.
Support faculty creatively. Most educators are
intrigued by the concept of integrative learning
but have different ideas about what integrative
learning means, how it develops, and what it
looks like in practice. Establishing more and
better occasions to talk about integrative learning
can help educators develop a more widely
shared understanding about its nature, varieties,
and value, and about how, when, and where it
can best be fostered. Such discussions can be
particularly productive when grounded in a
common text or project that involves analyzing
actual student work. But there should also be a
sustained, connected set of faculty development
experiences to build the necessary level of
skills, commitment, and community. Faculty
should, of course, be recognized and rewarded
for this work.
Make a commitment to knowledge building. Integrative learning initiatives should be accompanied
by a commitment to inquiry that
can first build knowledge about the depth of
student learning that results (or does not)
from participation in integrative opportunities,
and then suggest what aspects of the curriculum,
cocurriculum, course design, and
pedagogy foster and improve students' capacities
for integration. This means asking interesting
and important questions at each site where reform takes place; gathering and exploring
evidence; trying out and refining the
new insights that have been gained from this
process; and finding ways to make results public
so that they can inform and inspire further
work. Keep in mind that when assessment instruments,
such as assignments or surveys, are
well designed, they can serve as pedagogical
tools as well.
Recognize that institutionalization is a
long-term process. Strengthening integrative
learning on campus is a long-term process,
that requires leadership, creativity, and flexibility
on the part of everyone involved. To
sustain the work, leaders should think of
themselves as teachers, working with others
to transform their understandings, their commitments,
their beliefs, and their skepticism.
It is important to create opportunities for people
new to the initiative to get involved. And,
to maintain momentum, it helps to focus on
the goal--integrative learning--rather than
the parameters of any particular initiative. If
one design runs up against bureaucratic, political,
or financial roadblocks, it may be possible
to create new ones that skirt the problems,
while allowing time for a solution to be found.
Build networks beyond campus for collaboration
and exchange. An important lesson from
the Integrative Learning Project is that campus efforts are strengthened by working with other
campuses, sharing discoveries about integrative
learning, developing new ideas about assessment,
and learning from each other's designs.
Local efforts can be reinvigorated through participation
in a community of educators working
toward similar goals, and that community,
in turn, can contribute to building knowledge
that can inform efforts to foster integrative
learning at other colleges and universities. Securing
support from external donors and associations
can bring resources and recognition that
can enhance the status and visibility of integrative
learning initiatives on campus.
Prospects
This is a promising moment for advocates of
integrative learning. With all six regional and
four major specialized accreditors calling for
some form of integrative learning as an outcome
of college, what has long been an aspiration
for undergraduate education is now a
common expectation. Campuses are discussing
not whether integrative learning will
be part of undergraduate learning, but rather
how it will be defined, fostered, supported, and
assessed. It is our hope that institutions will
find models, tools, object lessons, and inspiration
from participants in the Integrative Learning
Project. But their work is not over. Like
everyone else, individuals on these campuses plan to continue to enlarge and strengthen
opportunities for integrative learning in the
years ahead, and continue to welcome the
company of fellow travelers along the way.
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About
the Project |
Through
the Integrative Learning Project: Opportunities
to Connect, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement
of Teaching and the Association of American Colleges
and Universities worked with the following campuses
to develop and assess advanced models and strategies
to help students pursue learning in more intentional,
connected ways:
-
Carleton College
- College
of San Mateo
- LaGuardia
Community College CUNY
- Massachusetts
College of Liberal Arts
- Michigan
State University
- Philadelphia
University
- Portland
State University
- Salve
Regina University
- State
University of New York College at Oswego
-
University of Charleston
Additional
information is available online at www.aacu.org/integrative_learning.
The project's public report is available online
at www.carnegiefoundation.org/elibrary/integrativelearning. |
Mary Taylor Huber is senior scholar, Pat Hutchings is vice president, Richard Gale is senior scholar, and Molly Breen is program associate, all at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Ross Miller is director of programs in the Office of Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment at AAC&U.
REFERENCES
Bloom, B. S., and collaborators. 1956. The taxonomy of educational objectives: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay.
Perry, W. G. 1998. Forms of ethical and intellectual development in the college years: A scheme. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Schneider, C. G. 2004. Changing practices in liberal education: What future faculty need to know. Peer Review 6 (3): 4--7.
To respond to this article, e-mail liberaled@aacu.org, with the author's name on the subject line.
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