Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) are often the center of discussion among faculty in higher education during discourse about curriculum conceptualization, design, planning development, and implementation. This commentary offers a functionally-centered framework that places faculty feasibility, fluidity, freedom, and flexibility around a core…

Higher Education institutions understand that there is a need to embed professional skills within degree programmes. However, evidence shows that graduates, whilst having developed good theoretical knowledge, lack experience and confidence when entering the workplace. Employers view the importance of degree-related skills as only a part of the…

The move to align curriculum has been an important aspect of endeavours to improve and reform higher education. This article places alignment reform at La Trobe University in its institutional context. The reform of generalist degrees programmes is emphasised. The article first traces a problem of curriculum anarchy which La Trobe shared with many…

The author's proposition is that there is a pedagogy of supervision, not that "this" is it in its entirety but that there is a pedagogy of supervision, that it has relevance for other levels of the curriculum, and that this pedagogy of supervision provides an entry point for academics to become involved in the scholarship of research,…

An essential difficulty in solving practical problems that are not like the ones a student has solved before is discerning the core of the problem. It is claimed that discernment has to be trained by variation--by varying the context of the assignments in which students have to identify and grasp their "underlying form". A decisive…

For perspective on the interdisciplinary challenge in higher education, it is important to understand the concept and origins of the "discipline." Disciplines are convenient but artificial constructs, and while academia may be divided into them, the world is not. A sense of the balance and connection between them is vital. (MSE)

A curriculum design that focuses on the human sciences, the disciplines that concern themselves with the social and individual activities that are distinctively human, would be a better approach than the current separation of the humanities and social sciences. (MSE)

Articles on literary canon include: "Educational Anomie" (Stephen W. White); "Why Western Civilization?" (William J. Bennett); "Peace Plan for Canon Wars" (Gerald Graff, William E. Cain); "Canons, Cultural Literacy, and Core Curriculum" (Lynne V. Cheney); "Canon Busting: Basic Issues" (Stanley…

Argues that an understanding of the objectives of general education must precede debates over delivery methods. Sees potential for agreement on objectives through recognition of the existence of a hierarchy of general education's purposes, comprising student liberation; the development of independent learning and thinking skills; and specific…

Interdisciplinary work has an important role to play in undergraduate study, but only as part of a larger pattern in which the disciplines as such must occupy a central position, since they supply the forms and structures that support a heritage of learning. (Author)

Educators must reinforce the distinction between the first 2 years of college education, to be reserved for general education, and the second two, in which specialization is appropriate. This might mean only loosening some requirements. In addition, more broad-based introductory courses should be provided for students to choose from. (MSE)

Religion and science have become polarized in modern society, a conflict characteristic of the humanities generally. Comparative religion has a place among the other humanities disciplines, since religion and science have a relationship whose roots go to the basis of our cultural tradition. (MSE)

The open university is taken to task for promulgating a passive curriculum and for obscuring the dynamic structuring of knowledge by teachers and learners that ought to be at the heart of university scholarship. The "package tour" approach to knowledge that characterizes introductory courses is blamed, in part. (MSE)

What is perceived as poor fit between liberal arts and the individual disciplines results not from narrow subject matter or analytical focus but from the disciplines keeping too many of the interesting questions to themselves. College students are not exposed enough to the reasons their teachers find their fields compelling. (MSE)

The past is the substance from which the present is formed, but college curricula based on this cultural heritage need not exclude the present. Major classical writers and social thinkers must be central to it but should be accompanied by critical engagement with living texts from powerful and active minds. (MSE)