Academic advisers play an important role in making general education relevant and meaningful to student learning by helping to facilitate the three I's of general education: inter-disciplinarity, integration, and intentionality. This essay argues that the "advising as learning" model of academic advising embodies the kinds of advising…

Students' level of engagement with general education and their grasp of its goals are a problem at many institutions. Academic advising, which is often viewed as having the "signpost" function of directing students to the completion of their course requirements, has the potential instead to be a place where students learn to approach…

The University of California-Merced's Core 1 has potential to foster genuine interdisciplinary thinking by asking students to conceptualize knowledge across fields of inquiry. Core 1 introduces students to the range of scholarly inquiry at the university all in the span of one semester-long, writing-intensive, integrated curriculum that encourages…

Are the humanities relevant enough to the average undergraduate to be included as a required part of a general education program? The University of Idaho (UI) is currently ten years into the challenge of implementing a cross-disciplinary, university-wide general education program--the UI Core--that has the attention, if not always the support, of…

Baxter Magolda's Learning Partnerships model was used to create a program designed to foster student epistemological development. To assess its effectiveness, the Measure of Epistemological Reflection was administered to the experimental cohort and a comparable group in the traditional general education program. Results indicate that the model…

Briefly considers four levels of intellectual integration and synthesis of knowledge and then, based on the fourth level, presents a model of faculty development in which an interdisciplinary team is granted release time to address a common intellectual goal. Presents factors influencing teacher participation in and benefits from interdisciplinary…

This essay argues that one of the strengths of interdisciplinary studies lies in its ability to teach higher-order thinking skills. The author cautions, however, that using a creative thinking model for interdisciplinary studies goes against the way most students have been taught to accept and process course material. (Contains 35 references.) (NB)

Argues that current practices for teaching integrative thinking skills are inadequate partly because no model exists to understand such efforts. Proposes a model for teaching integrative thinking based on existing models of creativity and synthesis. Discusses implications of the model for interdisciplinary studies. (32 citations) (AJL)