Integrated Studies: General Outcome
Understand the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge.
Overall Guidelines
The Integrated Studies requirement may be fulfilled by approved individual/stand-alone courses, linked courses, or coordinated studies programs that reflect the General Description, Student Learning Outcomes, and some of the suggested Curriculum Design Elements listed below.General Description
Integrated Studies is a collaborative teaching and learning mode which explores questions, problems, or issues too broad to be adequately studied within a single discipline, and which aims at a complex understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge.Student Learning Outcomes (1-4) and Suggestions for Curriculum Design Elements
- Discover the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge—by
- Investigating broad questions, issues, or themes transcending single disciplines
- Connecting learning across contexts (cognitive/affective; personal/public; school-life-career)
- Developing complex questioning processes to broaden and deepen inquiry
- Focusing the process of writing on the discovery of knowledge
- Integrate sources from multiple fields and viewpoints—by
- Analyzing a variety of academic perspectives
- Reading important texts critically and exploring them in student seminars
- Producing written, visual, or oral projects
- Work in a collaborative teaching and learning environment—by
- Contributing to the development of a collaborative learning community culture
- Participating in problem-solving, research, and presentation groups
- Developing sensitivity to and understanding of divergent peer perspectives
- Synthesize and evaluate new understandings and knowledge—by
- Engaging in the process of the active construction of knowledge
- Integrating several disciplinary insights into a larger whole
- Becoming comfortable with ambiguity associated with the study of complex issues
- Assessing the process and quality of one's own learning