Students are empowered as learners if encouraged to act as co-creators of the platforms and learning spaces they use for their college work.
Yes, though some students come to the classroom with deeply embedded ideas about how the learning environment operates and for some, it takes time to shift their stance from passive to more active and collaborative. Maybe the use of open digital platforms is just the "carrot" to make this happen...
Indeed, emotion can be a catalyst for integrative learning.
a set of experiences that captivate, encapsulate, synthesize, and demonstrate learning.”
This is it!
Typically, the capstone course has been situated within the major, and often it has been framed as a transition or rite of passage for students going on to graduate school. But capstones can serve more broadly integrative purposes.
How will this work at the community-college level? In the CJ program we are utilizing the capstone specifically to assess how well students synthesize and integrate what they have learned in the program.
related line of work goes by the label “learning how to learn.” A recent volume on new classroom approaches (Fink 2003) describes three capabilities associated with this term: how to be a better student, how to conduct inquiry and construct knowledge in certain disciplines or fi elds, and how to be a self-directing learner.
All good, but what to do when disproportionate numbers of students come from schools which Giroux calls "dead zones engaged in mostly training and testing students." What does it take to develop a 'habit of mind' towards integrative learning and creative inquiry? Do institutions of higher ed need to develop courses specifically focused on "learning how to learn?" Or, should this simply be accomplished by requiring students to take several IL courses?
When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: A Critical Pedagogy Manifesto
The classes being taught at any moment on a campus represent rich potential conversations between scholars and across disciplines. But since these conversations are experienced as a series of monologues, the possible links are apparent only to the minority of students who can connect disparate ideas on their own.
This is exactly what is so electrifying and gratifying about teaching in the Learning Community format. It not only helps students make connections, but it often fundamentally changes the way scholars teach their standalone courses.
Accordingly, students are now advised that the knowledge they gain in their majors will not be useful for long unless coupled with skills and dispositions that enhance their ability to fi nd and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise.
Hence the emphasis on general education outcome and the importance of aligning GenEds with program-level student learning outcomes.
capstone projects that ask students to draw on learning from earlier courses
Ideally, students would be exposed to integrative learning across the curriculum prior to enrolling in a capstone course. This makes the rational for an IL requirement more salient to me.