GEAR Committee Achievements
prepared by Ed Nuhfer & Elisabeth Harrington
• August, 2012 Meeting and Initial exposure to
metadisciplinarity
• September 2012 – Agree to explore metadisciplinary
approach across the curriculum
• Metadisciplinary progress
- Write proposal for small FLC grant from HSU System:
“Metadisciplinarity Frameworks as a Way to ‘Build a Better
Mousetrap’ for Liberal/General Education”
- Grant successful - funded January through December, 2013
- Investigators named and finalized.
- Draft metadisciplinary outcomes for the arts, social
sciences, humanities, math, and technology.
GEAR Committee Achievements cont’d
• Metadisciplinary progress cont’d– Metadisciplinary outcomes for science completed. Further testing of
assessment of science literacy through Science Literacy Concept
Inventory begins at HSU, and occurs on larger scale at other schools
including some other CSU campuses.
– GEAR Committee members identify higher level reasoning, critical
thinking and awareness of context as the main outcomes of GE
curriculum.
– Open faculty forum illustrates wide-spread agreement about this
assertion among HSU instructors.
– Polls taken in presentations in CSU System and national AACU
meetings show same consensus exists on a state and national level.
– GEAR drafts initial rubrics for assessing arts, humanities, social
science GE outcomes based on higher level reasoning and vets within
committee to for feedback from peers.
GEAR Committee Achievements cont’d
• Metadisciplinary progress cont’d– Proposal written to send HSU GEAR Team plus chair of FYE
Committee to AACU 2013 Institute on General Education and
Assessment in Vermont June 1-5. (Proposals are competitive.
See http://www.aacu.org/meetings/institute_gened/.)
– HSU’s proposal focused on metadisciplinarity is accepted.
– HSU Administration (Rollin, Bob and Jena’) pledges financial
support for travel and registration costs to send team of six
to participate in AACU’s Institute.
– GEAR begins to research metadisciplinarity outcomes in
context of critical thinking by reading chapter-per-week of
Stephen Brookfield’s book , Teaching for Critical Thinking to
better develop metadisciplinarity in context with established
views on critical thinking.
GEAR Committee Achievements cont’d
• HSU Outcomes review progress by GEAR
– GEAR team examines the 37 outcomes (not duplicating the
identical outcomes stated for GE’s Lower & Upper Divisions in
Area B) to understand the totality of current situation
– Classifies HSU’s outcomes as dominantly CONTENT, SKILLS, or
REASONING
• Discovers a few outcomes as problematic – i.e., not assessible
• Of remainder, 15 are strongest in content, 8 strongest in skill, and 11
strongest in reasoning with remaining 10 moderately addressing
reasoning.
• GEAR will focus next on only those outcomes strongest in reasoning
with consensus that skills and content be left to the
disciplines/programs.
GEAR Committee:
Immediate and summer-term plan
• HSU Outcomes review
– Will continue to solicit participation and feedback from HSU faculty
and administration participants in the next open forum and workshop
on General Education: Wednesday May 1, 4:30 – 6:00 PM in
University Banquet Room. (Senators are strongly encouraged to
attend.)
– Participants will engage in a brief exercise in classification of GE
outcomes to examine the nature of these as content, skills, reasoning
or simply as problematic.
– Prior to workshop, all willing parties are asked to complete a brief twoquestion survey at http://tinyurl.com/HSUGEAR2query to express
views about what is working and what is problematic with present GE.
(Senators, please respond.)
– Survey will go out to general faculty; responses collated and used to
inform summer work.
GEAR Committee:
Immediate and summer-term plan con’d
• Preparation for AACU Retreat June 1-5
– Use classification and mapping of HSU outcomes to improve
metadisciplinary outcomes and rubrics.
– Consider models through which a metadisciplinary reasoning
foundational model could be implemented in creative ways at HSU,
some based on CSU’s "Give Students a Compass" Meeting held March
8-9, 2013 in Redwood City attended by GEAR team member Ed Nuhfer
• “Wicked Problems ”integrated model
• Thematic Pathways
• Integrated GE Capstones
– GEAR team to focus next on mapping the HSU outcomes focused on
reasoning across the metadisciplines in order to understand how to
develop these, as needed, into new outcomes that can best help
develop reasoning across the curriculum.
– Complete reading Brookfield’s critical thinking book; begin reading
Dunlosky and Metcalfe’s book Metacognition considered as essential.
– GEAR Retreat May 21 all day to assemble plan, materials and rubrics
to employ at AACU workshop.
GEAR Committee:
Immediate and summer-term plan cont’d
• Spend June 1-5 at AACU in presenting our plans, being mentored, viewing
approaches of other institutions by interacting with their teams, revising
our model.
• Discuss how to best leverage FYS with GE to best advantage
• Assemble our plan and outline work to be done. Report to Senate’s first
meeting in fall.
• Metadisciplinary FLC Team (ONLY!) maps next steps to continue their
research and nature of final report to CSU System at end of 2013.
• Plans for sharing work with Senate, GEAR and broader dissemination of
their work through presentations/publications.
• Continue to receive and consider feedback from all interested parties. Emails are welcome anytime and can be addressed to GEAR committee
chair Elisabeth Harrington at elisabeth.harrington@humboldt.edu.