Two colleagues had responses to my post on the curriculum reform currently in proces at UNC.
First, from Chris Lundberg, in the Communications Department, who thinks he may be the source for my (stolen) list of the primary goals of university education in our information saturated age:
“I think I might be the unattributed source for the formula!
The only thing that I’d add to what you already wrote here is to disassociate capacities from skills. Here’s an abbreviated version of my schtick (though you’ve heard it before).
The university is subject to disruption for a number of reasons: folks don’t understand the mission; the content we teach is not responsive to the needs that students have beyond Carolina, and lots of folks have a legitimate argument to teach information and skills.
One of the ways we talked about this in the conversation we had awhile back was to ask “what are the things that can’t be outsourced?”—either to another mode of learning information or skills, or, in the case of the job market, to someone behind a computer screen somewhere else. So the formulation that we’d talked about was something like If you can learn content remotely, the vocation organized around that content that is highly likely to be outsourced.
So the case for the university also has to be a case about what is unique about the mode of instruction. That’s the thing about capacities. They aren’t just about something that you learn as content, they are also the kinds of things that you have to do and receive feedback on in the presence of other folks. Writing, Speaking, reasoning together, framing arguments, etc.
The information/content part of education doesn’t make a case for the uniqueness of the university—the Internet is real good at delivering information. You don’t need a library card anymore to access the repository of the world’s information. What you need is to learn how to effectively search, pick, and put together a case for what that information is useful. The capacity for sorting and seeing connections in information is the thing. (see the “neat formula”)
Skills (or as the folks in the corporate sector call them now, competencies) are defined by the ability to know how to perform a given task in a given context. Their usefulness is bounded measuring (typically a behavior_) against the demands of that context. A capacity, OTOH is a trans-contextual ability (set of habits of inquiry and thought, ways of deliberating, etc.) that works across multiple contexts. For example, the biology text my dad used was horribly misinformed about genetic expression (they didn’t know about epigenetics, micro RNA, etc.). What was valuable about his biology class (dad was a biotech entrepreneur) was that he learned how to engage the content: what was a legitimate scientific argument; what made a study good; how to do observational research; a facility for the vocabulary, etc. That set of capacities for thinking about science benefitted him even if the content did not. A capacity is something like the condition of possibility for learning content—think Aristotle on dunamis here—not unlike a faculty in its function, but unlike a faculty because it is the result of learning a specific style or mode of thought and engagement. Where faculties are arguably innate, capacities are teachable (constrained by the innate presence of faculties). That, by the way, is what makes it hard to outsource capacity based learning either in terms of the mode of learning (harder to do lab research online) and in terms of the vocation (you can’t acquire it as effectively as you might in the context of a face-to-face learning community).
So, a big part of the sell, at least in my opinion, should be about framing capacities as the socially, politically, and economically impactful “middle” ground between information and skills—and therefore justifying both the university and Gen Ed as an element of a liberal arts curriculum.”
Second, from my colleague in the English Department, Jane Danielewicz, who puts some flesh on the bones of “active learning” and weighs in issues of assessment:
“If we relinquish our grip on teaching primarily content, then we must also develop new methods of assessment. Our standard tests are content focused. To assess competencies, students must be asked to demonstrate those competencies. Our methods of assessment will need to evaluate students’ performances rather than their ability to regurgitate content knowledge.
We should be asking students to write in genres that are recognizable to audiences in various real world settings. We should also strive to provide real occasions where a student can demonstrate their competencies to an audience, starting with an audience of their peers and moving out from there. For example, students can present posters or conference papers at a min-conference (held during the exam period).
Assessment can be tied to the genre is question. E.g. for the conference presentation (and we all know what makes a good or bad conference presentation–and should work to convey that knowledge to students), students can be assessed on how well they performed the research, made an argument, supplied evidence, and communicated (orally and visually).
Yes, classes will need to be redesigned to encourage active learning, immersive classroom environments, process-based instruction, problem-oriented class content, and appropriate assessment methods. Many faculty are already moving in these directions, teaching in ways that develop students’ competencies. Faculty organizations such as the Center for Faculty Excellence are (and have been) providing instruction and support for active learning, experiential learning, and collaborative learning practices. Some of our students have built web-sites, started non-profit organizations (grounded in research about an issue), written family histories, presented at national conferences, and published in peer-reviewed journals. We will be sorely disappointing our very action-oriented student body if we retrench and insist on a coverage model of GenEd.”
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