Liberal Education, Fall 2010
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Fall2010Vol.96No.4

Integrative Learning at Home and Abroad

An in-depth look at integrative learning, including its relation to interdisciplinary studies, its implications for faculty development, and its role in the sweeping changes to higher education in Hong Kong. Additional topics include Project Kaleidoscope’s role in fostering innovation in STEM pedagogy and faculty development, often-overlooked classroom variables that affect the quality of teaching and learning, the relationship between computer science and liberal education outcomes, students’ understanding of liberal education, and three-year degree proposals.

Table of Contents
President's Message

General Education 1.0: An Efficiency Overhaul for the Cold War Curriculum

By Carol Geary Schneider
Critiqued by students, decried by thoughtful faculty and other academic leaders, and being redesigned by AAC&U member institutions across the country, the tattered old distribution system is currently receiving not a decent burial, but an efficiency overhaul led simultaneously by the federal government, state legislators, and some parts of the philanthropic community.

From 1818 R Street, NW

From the Editor

By David Tritelli

Featured Topic

Educating for a Complex World: Integrative Learning and Interdisciplinary Studies

By William H. Newell
A mixture of integrative learning and interdisciplinary studies, appropriately conceived and well grounded in academic disciplines, constitutes the most effective education for a complex world. But how exactly should interdisciplinary studies and integrative learning be conceived? 

Perspectives

Project Kaleidoscope 2.0: Leadership for Twenty-First-Century STEM Education

By Susan Elrod
Since its founding in 1989, Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) has been pushing the frontiers of innovation in STEM pedagogy and faculty development, leadership capacity building, and network creation among its cross-disciplinary membership. As PKAL formulates its next-generation agenda, it does so within the context of a new formal partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

How Teachers Need to Deal with the Seen, the Unseen, the Improbable, and the Nearly Imponderable

By Marshall Gregory
In addition to dealing with the more or less obvious variables that affect classroom dynamics, teachers need to learn how to deal with the far more difficult issues related to learning, identity, selfhood, and autonomy.

My view

The Three-Year Degree: An Idea Whose Time Will Pass

By Mary B. Marcy
If we are to take three-year degree proposals at face value and consider this model as the new standard for obtaining bachelor’s degrees in the United States, then we must answer questions besides those of efficiency and cost. We must act as academic leaders and answer questions of educational merit.

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