2024 Institute on Engaged and Integrative Learning
Curricular Framework
The institute curriculum is designed to support teams as they work to create and/or revise engaged and integrative learning models that span the curriculum and the cocurriculum, the classroom and the community (community-engaged learning, internships, project-based learning, etc.), and college and careers/career readiness. The curriculum will provide participants with strategies and pedagogies for engaged learning through which students will make connections across their entire experience. Over the course of the institute, participants will have opportunities to attend sessions and/or workshops, meet with institute faculty for discussion and feedback, and have team time to apply institute learning to their institutional action plan.
The institute curriculum is designed to support campus teams to advance their work through a focus on five themes:
Theme 1: Innovative Pedagogies for Engaged and Integrative Learning
Theme 2: Application and Alignment of Community-Engaged Learning Across Campus
Theme 3: Assessment of Engaged and Integrative Learning
Theme 4: Leadership for Engaged and Integrative Learning
Theme 5: Embedding Signature Work throughout Student Experiences
Principles
The institute curriculum is also informed by five principles for quality integrative liberal education developed as part of AAC&U’s General Education Maps and Markers (GEMs) project. These principles describe qualities that should be present across the entire curriculum and cocurriculum, that bridge general education and majors, and that connect the curriculum with students’ informal learning.
Colleges and universities should provide clear statements of desired learning outcomes for all students, as well as design curricula and experiences that lead to the development of proficiencies that are demonstrated at progressively higher levels.
All students should be active participants in creating an educational plan that enables them to understand the intellectual and personal capacities they are developing and act in principled and constructive ways.
Students should develop and demonstrate proficiency through inquiry into unscripted problems, combining and integrating curricular, cocurricular, and community-based learning as well as prior learning experiences.
A college education should be equity-minded in design and implementation, focusing on understanding and addressing inequalities in outcomes and advancing practices and policies aimed at achieving the full spectrum of learning outcomes for all students, regardless of their backgrounds.
Students, faculty members, and other stakeholders should understand what proficiencies students are developing, and how these proficiencies can be demonstrated through authentic student work at key milestones in students’ progress toward the degree.
Questions?
Please contact Jasmine Epps at [email protected] or 202-888-3808.