A number of universities in the United Kingdom (UK) have launched institution-wide initiatives recently to embed inquiry and research more firmly into the student experience. Among these, the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS) led a five-year development program at The University of Sheffield (TUOS) between…

The initiative to revise Texas Christian University's (TCU) general education curriculum was one of the outcomes of an institutional strategic planning process in 2000, the Commission on the Future of TCU. Coincident with this planning process, TCU developed a new institutional mission statement that focused on preparing students for becoming…

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) has widespread appeal in higher education as a suite of teaching strategies that promotes learning through students' increasingly independent investigation of questions, problems, and issues using the methods of inquiry of the disciplines. Framed as especially appropriate for research universities, IGL has been…

The University of Gloucestershire, located in the southwest of the United Kingdom, is a small university with approximately 7,500 full-time students and 400 teaching staff. It has three faculties, all with a professional or applied focus: (1) Media, Art, and Technology; (2) Business, Education, and Professional Studies; and (3) Applied Sciences.…

In 2006, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) launched a major initiative, the Top 25 Project, to embed inquiry-guided learning (IGL) into its largest-enrollment courses across the university. These are generally entry-level classes and thus affect many students: 75 percent of incoming students on its main campus in 2010 were in at least one Top 25…

The term "assessment" sends shivers down academic spines. For faculty, it signals marching orders from external parties who may or may not appreciate the subtle and not always quantifiable value of faculty efforts. For administrators, it means the dual challenge of recalibrating internal measures to meet external mandates but also…

When the University of North Dakota began working to improve general education, two concerns were recognized. The first issue, which faculty and administrators across campus found immediately engaging, was how to change general education so that it would be a better program, more likely to yield clear student learning benefits. A second concern,…

As early as 1935, librarians dreamed of seamless integration of information skills into the college curriculum. More than seventy years later, it is disheartening to note that only a select few universities have managed to fully embed information literacy (IL) throughout the curriculum in a strategic and pervasive manner. In a study of campus…

Describes Robert Kegan's theory of meaning-making--how individuals make sense of knowledge, experience, relationships, and the self. Applies the theory to college students and how their understanding of their experience, themselves, and their relationships with others mediates learning. Draws implications for the design of college curricular…

Strategies for locating interdisciplinary knowledge and information for development of college curricula and instruction are outlined, including identification of existing curriculum models and syllabi (through publications, networking, and online searching) and finding literature on the concept of interdisciplinarity in the humanities, social…

Follow-up activities are essential to maintaining a writing-across-the-curriculum program. La Salle University created a second stage of program development through new workshops and symposia, collaborative teaching and co-authoring, and opportunities for student involvement. (MSE)

Steps to improving introductory courses to keep the appropriate liberal education emphasis include: teach less, restructure testing, relate course content to problems in the outside world, pursue ethical issues, balance facts with other forms of knowledge, teach the arts of discussion and critical thinking, and help students develop wisdom. (MSE)

Introductory psychology courses are often designed as technical, preprofessional courses for majors, but they should instead offer a view of human nature. A Wesleyan University course was designed on the notion of the psychological human, and covered the functions of perception and memory, cognitive processes, the social dimension of human nature,…

Teaching the large introductory science course is a challenge, but when the objective is seen not as covering the field but uncovering part of it to illustrate principles common to the whole, the facts are no longer the end result but tools with which the disciplines can be further explored. (Author/MSE)

Introducing cultural diversity into the core curriculum need not be political. Traditional departmental structures could be reconfigured to incorporate third world studies at the introductory level and within the scope of traditional core courses. Interweaving non-Western studies with existing curricula is preferable to putting them in courses by…