transportation costs, childcare challenges: research shows that these are some of the main barriers that prevent students from affording college; because we know this, we actively seek solutions within our program to ameliorate these challenges for our students, even as we advocate nationally for free college.
As a non-traditional student with children, commuting and a job, I am grateful for a program that respects these challenges.
is generally locked down and generally controlled by the instructor
In the nicest way possible I have to say I still feel a bit controlled in this intro class. While I do understand that we need a well rounded understanding of what IDS is, I still feel a bit run down by the number of articles and posts in the intro class on interdisciplinary studies. There have been a few posts and annotations requirements that feel very repetitive and I am just not feeling inspired by the readings. I still find myself going through the motions in the blog posts. I was hoping to have more ability to explore the interdisciplinarity of my field.
And our data is a bit spotty (PSU reports that we have a 100% retention rate for our majors, but this is clearly overstated), but there is no question that we are retaining students left and right.
Students in IDS are passionate about something, but it may not be a thing that PSU offers, or it may be a new thing all together. Passion is a driving force for these students and this is what is going to keep them committed to the program.
Most Physical and Occupational Therapy students currently build programs through #PlymouthIDS, as do Pre-Med students.
Transferring into PSU with an associate's degree in Exercise Science, I thought that the Exercise and Sport Physiology program was for me. However, I knew that my path ultimately needed to get me into a physical therapy program, and I found that was just not going to work. I had never fully understood the concept of the IDS program and was nervous to change majors at first, but I was so overwhelmed with trying to fit my pre-reqs and course requirements all into four semesters. IDS saved my life.
experiment
I wish I had this knowledge when I graduated high school. Now, I am in my thirties, I have no time to experiment.
An overarching fear of interdisciplinarity is the “10,000 hour rule,” meaning interdisciplinary students might graduate as masters of nothing.
This was huge for me. I am now starting to see the areas of my misconceptions, but I truly believed (and still have doubts at times) that a degree in Interdisciplinary studies on my resume would be meaningless to potential employers. Particularly if I do not get into grad school.
but sometimes the structures across departments do not align with one another, making
I think many of us with advisors from different departments have seen this at work. Each department thinks that theirs is superior for certain purposes. For example, the business department may believe their classes are more relevant to marketing than psychology classes or art classes, and push a student into taking more.
Hopefully the attitudinal barriers in education
I myself had pre-disposed attitudes toward interdisciplinary studies.
Society needs people to be masters in specific areas because they contribute to the understanding of the world at large.
Exactly. We wouldn't know that we are made up of tiny atoms or understand the inner workings of our bodies unless specialists spent many years studying these very specific things.
because everyone is always already doing it.
Even if one is specialized in one area, it is useful to understand the benefit of collaborating with others in different disciplines.
employers like employees who know what they want, are confident in their decisions, think independently, know their strengths and weaknesses, and are curious about life
These qualities are necessary to be able to effectively build a major for yourself. These qualities are validated throughout the process and are improved instead of muted by their curriculum.
interdisciplinary students create a plan that combines all their interests into a single, personalized major
If the student is engaged in the creation, they will remain more engaged throughout the process and know the WHY of what their program contains.
but the decision should come from them for it to be a meaningful, beneficial experience.
I totally agree with this. If the student does not make this decision on their own they will resent the subject itself.
The benefits of finding creative and integrative ways to combine disciplines far outweigh the disadvantages of interdisciplinarity.
I do agree with this statement. There are many ways this is improving the outcomes of students.
necessity for collaboration of educators.” One of the capstones of higher education is the collaboration between students, professors, and advisors.
It does seem difficult to imagine that educators could be so interdisciplinary that they cannot teach in a particular subject. Interdisciplinary is helpful in some professions. but one sacrifices expertise in a particular subject. I want my psych professor to know a lot about psychology. But as far as collaboration, there are certainly areas that can have experts collaborate with experts in other fields. There will still be student who choose to specialize, and they can have their groups. Collaborative groups may form on the basis of desired professional fields that would traditionally work together in the real world.
work in a team, write a grant, or engage meaningfully with other people, he may be turned away from a job or his career may not flourish.
As I have mentioned before, I do not understand why these basic foundational human skills are the responsibility of the college. To me, these are things that a student should have the ability to do before even getting to college.
views on education are still relevant today
interesting that this sounds a lot like what our program promotes. This shouldn't really be radical if this is the way the thinkers of old studied. Big names like Aristotle to Da Vinci.
Understanding
Of course there must be disciplines to create interdisciplinarity
force themselves to define all of the available research on that problem as of possible relevance, and to see themselves as contributing to the resolution of a problem rather than as adding information to an isolated discipline”
Of course this is true. It is necessary to have both. It is also important to learn that we should not become complacent with knowledge we have already obtained and reject that any new information could possibly come about. The basis of learning should be to always ask questions and never simply accept what others say as truth without critical evaluation.
never-ending search for knowledge: since humanity’s stock of knowledge cannot be mastered, and since reality itself must forever elude us, the quest for truth might be given up as misguided in principle
This tells me that this cannot be a one-sided argument. We need both interdisciplinarians and experts. There is no way to know it all. But it is important to know the consequences of one discipline on another. It is also important to have those that focus on one problem. If someone doesn't focus on a single problem, we may never get a solution.
to acquire skill like this and at the same time to live the proper life of a man and a citizen.
Interesting because there are many people that do acquire a skill but only one skill, and are kind of terrible at life, in general.
This comedy of errors could be expanded to fill volumes. Such oversights can be found in works of the highest quality: they are part and parcel of the scholarly condition
It is interesting to me that there is so much information that contradicts other information. I never thought of a lack of interdisciplinarity to be a reason for this.
The natives live and breathe their customs; the perceptive foreigner doesn’t.
A sociological approach applied to other areas
Since one can be trainedonly in what is already known, training sometimes incapacitates one from learning new ways; it makes one rebel against what is bound to be at first loose and even sloppy.
I like how this is worded, once trained in the "right way" of doing something, it becomes difficult to stray. Everything that you have learned tells you that anything else is wrong and others with the same training will rebel against any deviation.
Highly creative artists and thinkers form unconventional but fruitful permutations of disparate ideas
This is very true of many early discoveries, the majority think this artist or thinker to be crazy, until later proven to be accurate.
which possesses its own community of experts
Experts could be redefined
It has become too easy to criticize esoteric research as narrow, detached, and trivial.
This may be why it is difficult for people to put the research into practice.
lead directly to positions in the job market
Why is this bad?
synthesis and systemic thinking are not just luxuries
I very much agree with this
60 percent of the degrees were in preprofessional or technical fields.
These are the degrees that translate into making a living. With the aforementioned increase in knowledge, it is no longer productive to just be OK at a bunch of things. We need people who are really good in particular fields that also have general knowledge.
By one estimate, college students typically spend less than half the time on their studies than the faculty expects.
I can certainly relate to this.
Higher education must raise the important issues and guide students in synthesizing responses, if not answers.
I kind of feel like this should not be the responsibility of higher education, but the responsibility of everything before you get there. Maybe into the first year of college. As an older student, I have no desire to pay someone to tell me how to think. Once I get to the point of paying for education, I know what I want and that is what I should be paying for.
breaking it up into smaller and smaller unconnected fragments of academic specialization
I do think that departments should not be so separatist. Education, as in real life, should be integrated and an understanding must be formed of how knowledge translates to real life.
Home Depot approach
Nail on the head
Today’s students fulfill general-education requirements, take specialized courses in their majors, and fill out their schedule with some electives
When I was at the community college, I did not feel this as much. Since I have transferred here, I have felt this way most of the time. I feel like only a small percentage of the classes I have taken here have been truly fulfilling and helped me in my studies. Many classes I have had to take to fulfill requirements I have found to be nothing more than excess work that I have to pay someone else for.
Truths are independently verifiable, and they
People need to understand this. You cannot change this.
creative, and unusual, as the mixing of guavas, kiwis, and blueberries
I feel like a creative and unusual blend of disciplines is not well supported in our current world. It still has to translate to obtaining a job. As we have been told multiple times, we cannot have a Math and basket weaving program.
distance: mixing Mackintosh and Winesap apples would result in less amalgamation
Distance is an odd feeling word for this.
Are you more interested in INSTRUMENTAL or CRITICAL interdisciplinarity?
I think these are both important. In the practice of a profession, we should utilize instrumental, but always questioning the organizations means that we are thinking for ourselves and not simply following blindly.
“Interdisciplinarity” is more like a fruit smoothie, where the disciplines are blended together–integrated– to create something new
This is a good metaphor. I don't know that even our interdisciplinary program is doing this though. I think that the students end up doing this themselves. Yes, we're taking multiple disciplines and combining them into one program, but there are very few faculty that help us to see the "new thing" we can create.
broaden students’ education, to gain understanding, and/or to problem solve.
I feel like this should be the intended goal of college anyway. I think some colleges claim that this is the case citing gen-ed requirements as evidence. However, there is still too much rigidity in the system.
Don’t they need to be oriented at the proper audience?
No, they don't. Who is determining the "proper" audience? How does the audience know if the writer is writing with bias towards a particular audience even if the reflected ideas are not truly their beliefs? Maybe the student does not want an audience at all.
For instance, public assignments tap into fears of public embarrassment.
This could be exacerbated by lack of basic education on the topic, or even lack of interest in the topic. However, this should not mean they don't have to learn it. There are going to be topics that still must be learned but still may not warrant posting a narrative about it online.
They are questioning how their student’s ‘domains’ can engage broader audiences and promote high quality, original scholarship
not everyone wants a broader audience.
The domains project isn’t revolutionary to the traditional classroom, but it is revolutionary to a classroom reimagined around public scholarship, student agency and experimentation
I see this as working well for liberal arts students and a bit less so for the hard sciences and math. How exactly does this work for learning science. One can only write about it if they know real facts about it. Again, I see this as a good supplement to learning, but not the end all be all of learning.
Without such fluency, students cannot compete economically or intellectually,
Adapting with technology is the all important aspect of remaining competitive in the job market. Look at all the secretaries that spent many years on a typewriter and then suddenly couldn't find a job unless they learned how to use a computer. I disagree with part of this, however. Not gaining fluency in a digital medium does not reflect intellect. An extremely intellectual person may choose to have minimal online presence and that should be fine. There are many ways to demonstrate intelligence.
So, how might colleges and universities shape curricula to support and inspire the imaginations that students need?
Everything must evolve to survive. We learned this a long time ago, thank you Darwin. However, I hope this does not lead to a loss of the importance of learning facts.
Best of all, faculty could bring students into these environments without fear that they would be embarrassed by their lack of skill or challenged by students’ unfamiliar innovations
I know that teachers likely had difficulty with this. I am a student and still have difficulty with the techie stuff.
A transcript is by definition a copy of their education record.
I do think that a transcript is not completely indicative of a student's work. I do, however, still believe grades are important and give a partial picture. Having a digital "portfolio" would be a beneficial compliment to the transcript. They really shouldn't be such a pain to get a hold of though.
Giving students their own digital domain is a radical act
So, radical may not be the right word. I feel like this ability is relatively new. "owning a domain" has not always been accessible to everyone.
not simply grades and assignments that are locked away in a proprietary system controlled by the school.
A student must learn things before having the knowledge required to create anything. Assignment and grades help that learning aspect. A bunch of kids opinions about random stuff means very little to anyone else unless there is a basis of fact.