Reflection on Fall 1999 Course Outcomes
Modification of course theme | Issues with interdisciplinary design | Student awareness of diverse disciplinary approaches | The Fine and Applied Arts vs. The Global Issues Course | Levels of integration in IDST 2310 | Modifications to the course in the spring 2000 | Pedagogy, globalism, and course outcomes
Conclusions: Modifications of the Course Based on Student Responses
The student comments suggest that in many ways, this semester's offering was very effective at achieving many of the goals of the specific course and of an interdisciplinary course in general. It was also successful at supporting the institutional mission. Greater empathy for diverse perspectives was a strong theme, as was greater appreciation for complexity of issues. Students appreciated the breadth of the course's perspectives on issues. One of the surprising results of this survey was that students were not perplexed by the lack of a clear and absolute answer on issues, but rather appreciated the open-ended nature of the course and saw this as an opportunity to formulate their own viewpoints and even to achieve greater self-knowledge and growth.
Modification of Course Theme
One important result of the semester's study was that the surveys made me realize how much the course's content emphasized self-knowledge, the self within community, and the self within the cosmos.
The original theme of this course as developed by the faculty team was "form and function." I was never comfortable with this theme, as I felt that it did not provide enough of a unifying factor across the units we wanted to cover. In the fall 1999 I taught the course with the theme "What is Art?", which allowed me to organize the course around aesthetic theories and to teach it with a problems-based structure. The student responses allowed me to see a better structure for the course that was already tacitly present in many of the readings, assignments, and discussions. Several responses emphasized self-knowledge and the development of skills for life. Several of our units and activities might have accounted for the prevalence of these responses. We began this semester with a preferential shapes assignment in which students ordered shapes and then interpreted their psychological meaning; we continued with a unit on color aesthetics in which students created a ring based on Yoruba aesthetics which in essence was a self-portrait; we concluded the term with a self-portrait in the visual arts. Consequently, in the Spring 2000, I piloted a revised version of the course under the theme "What is art? A journey of discovery of self, society, and cosmos." This theme spoke more to what the students found the most interesting and useful about the course, and provided greater unifying structure to my teaching of the course.
Issues with Interdisciplinary Design
One other interesting result that requires some reflection and perhaps course modifications is that the students seemed to be much more aware of diversity of cultural perspective than of disciplinary approach. In part, this is due to the fact that IDST 2310 is a course with a narrow interdisciplinary approach. The majority of disciplinary perspectives come from the arts and humanities. In general, the disciplinary resources of each unit, such as Houses of Prayer, present a total world view of the culture in question and a harmonious account of a particular subject in the arts. Each discipline's resources often contribute to an overall thesis without creating any sort of cognitive dissonance. For example, in the unit on Mosques in the Houses of Prayer discussion, students study the history of Islam and the content of the Qur'an, and then apply these teachings to Islamic art. The cognitive dissonance in the "Houses of Prayer" unit comes more from the diverse cultural approaches to sacred spaces and their diverse religious beliefs, as opposed to diversity of disciplinary perspective. On the other hand, what units such as "Houses of Prayer" do foster is the ability to apply an abstract concept to several very diverse disciplinary contexts. This does not create cognitive dissonance so much as it develops the ability to see the multiple dimensions of a single concept.
Therefore, one of the main outcomes of my first semester's research was to reevaluate the design and the outcomes of the IDST 2310 course. The lack of awareness of the use of multiple disciplinary resources as an important aspect of this course by over 2/3 of the students in responses to question 1 was disturbing.
Student Awareness of Diversity of Disciplinary Approach
Oddly enough, when asked a leading question, such as I asked in question 3, students were able to discern differences of disciplinary approach between their instructors, one of whom was a historian and the other an art historian.
*Yes, Dr. Vess shows the very logical and analytical side to most of the material and Dr. Farrar shows the more spiritual and intangible side to most of the material. (Student 12, sophomore, Psychology)
*I believe that Dr. vess and Dr. farrar were very successful in approaching the issues of art from their specific standpoints. Dr. Vess approached it from a more logical and historical aspect (which I understood more) and Dr. Farrar approached the idea of art from a more personal stand point. I believe that both instructors complimented each others approaches to give the class a well rounded point of view. (Student 18, sophomore, nontraditional student, Criminal Justice) This student's work continually reflected an awareness and integration of diverse disciplinary resources. The student discussed discussed anthropological and archaeological resources in an analysis of Paleolithic cave art and functionalism on the first exam; the final exam likewise mentioned several disciplinary resources; the self-portrait discussion mentioned psychological theories of the self, their expression in literature, Hindu views of the self, and Taoism.
*Dr. Farrar represents the viewpoint of art in that she come in to discuss the actual art in every unit. For example, she presents information on the color and texture of the art itself. Dr. Vess, on the other hand, discusses the historical aspects of the art and let's us in on what was going on at the time and with the culture. So we get to learn about the art and about who crafted the art and why. (Student 24, sophomore, Mass Communications) This student's final exam made use of the perspectives of art, architecture, sculpture, and music; the student also mentioned psychological theories of the self, literary portrayals of these theories, Asian religious views of the self, color aesthetics, and Jungian preferential shape theory in her description of her self-portrait.
*Dr. Farrar seems to think every thing is "beautiful" and doesn't really see the technical side of the class like Dr. Vess. (Student 27, sophomore, Biology)
*Dr.Vess presented the historical and culture background behind the pieces, such as the unit on the Art of Benin. On the other hand, Dr.Farrar present an artistic viewpoint. She talked about the various devices an artist uses to portray the desired message, as well as presenting examples from modern art. (student 28, freshman, Marketing) This student's self-portrait project also showed a clear awareness of several disciplinary perspectives, including medieval color aesthetics, Jungian Psychology in the literature of Rilke, and the Newtonian mechanistic view of the universe.
*Dr.Vess taught us the art from the point of view of why a piece of art was important at that time in history according to the political and social state of being at the time the art was created. Dr.Farrar taught us why a piece of art was important because of the artistic quality. (Student 32, sophomore, undecided) This student's self-portrait project reflected awareness of Yoruba color theory as well as Jungian interpretations of the labyrinth even if the level of analysis was low.
Several students, then, could demarcate the different perspectives represented by the instructors' disciplines, and could also list different disciplinary perspectives in examples of units (question 4):
*An example would be the French Revolutionary art. Not only did we learn something about history, we also learned about the art of that time period and why it was so important. (Student 7, sophomore, undecided)
*For example, when we looked at a slide of a painting, we looked at it's mathematical qualities, it's religious qualities, it's cultural background and relevance, and it's aesthetic qualities. (Student 17, sophomore, Music Education) This student's work also clearly reflected awareness of multiple perspectives. In the first exam, this student discussed numerology, historical perspectives, color theory, and architecture in a discussion of Chartres cathedral.
*The architecture played a huge role because of all the different mosks and temples, and the Egyptian pyramids. I'm sure it took alot of mathematical means and formulas to build these sacred buildings. There was alot of Arabic writing in art and in the mosks. Science also played an important role especially in the pyramids where the flooding of the Nile could be predicted. (Student 21, sophomore, Nursing) This student's exams also clearly showed awareness of multiple perspectives. This student discussed architecture, science, astronomy, and mythology in the first exam. This student's self-portrait project also reflected awareness of color theory, Jungian shape symbolism, and Daoism.
*We attended a storytelling of Beowulf. We attended a Beethoven recital. We studied religion via landscape (Zen garden) and literature (Tao of Pooh). (student 28, freshman, Marketing) This student's self-portrait project also showed a clear awareness of several perspectives, including medieval color aesthetics, Jungian Psychology in the literature of Rilke, and the Newtonian mechanistic view of the universe.
Awareness of Diverse Disciplinary Perspectives in the Fine and Applied Arts vs. the Global Issues Courses?
There was awareness, then, of diverse disciplinary perspectives, yet this awareness did not strike the students as a defining feature of the course. This may be due to the fact that, as one student put it, "It's hard to distinguish the disciplines apart from the other because they are so closely knit together." (Student 6, sophomore, Computer Science) Nevertheless, when directed to use different disciplinary resources in the final essay, this student was able to distinguish between architecture, painting, and sculpture in the examples cited to support the positions of different aesthetic schools. If the student's understanding of functionalism and other aesthetic schools was not always clear and some facts and dates were incorrect, the examples given indicate awareness of diverse forms if art. As stated above, the various disciplines here contribute to a holistic picture of a particular issue, and so students were universally more struck by the diversity of global perspective than by diversity of disciplinary perspective. Further, although students could frequently list diverse disciplinary perspectives in various units, they often could not list any intellectual conflicts between the materials presented by the various instructors.
I am unsure whether this is entirely a function of the similarity of approach between the disciplines represented in the IDST 2310: Fine and Applied Arts in Civilization course. Student responses to a similar survey in the IDST 2205: Global Issues course were also very weak on question 1; only five of twenty-five the respondents clearly defined an interdisciplinary course as representing the perspectives of more than one discipline. Global Issues is primarily a course in the social sciences as taught by this particular team. It may be that there again, similarity of methodology of the disciplines makes the perspectives hard to distinguish.
Both sets of responses strongly indicate that students do not perceive diversity of disciplines or disciplinary perspectives on topical issues unless there is greater clarity in presentation of issues and perhaps greater disjunction in the disciplinary perspectives. Oddly enough, in the IDST 2205: Global Issues course, students participated in a simulation world summit over issues related to the world's rain forests, and assumed roles which clearly represented many disciplinary perspectives. They wrote formal papers representing the perspectives of their roles, and also had an in-class debate. In the course of the assignment, students were forced to analyze and synthesize the perspectives of economics, sociology, history, anthropology, political sciences, and other disciplines. Yet these students were even less able on the whole to define "interdisciplinary" as meaning more than one disciplinary perspective than the students in IDST 2310. They seemed to perceive the simulation as involving diversity of role, not of disciplinary content, methodology, or perspective. If knowledge of diverse disciplinary approaches is intended to be an outcome of an interdisciplinary course, these preliminary findings would suggest that instructors must make the different disciplinary perspectives absolutely clear to students.
Levels of Integration in IDST 2310
The lack of clarity in student responses also highlighted the ways in which many course units in my IDST 2310 course fell short of true interdisciplinarity. The course units employ a wide array of levels of integration (see course design section for a discussion and definition of these different levels). The modules in the unit on Functionalism are mostly cross-disciplinary rather than truly interdisciplinary. For example, the unit on mosques focuses on explicating the structure and appearance of a mosque through reference to the career of Mohammed and Islamic beliefs as found in the Qur'an. Similarly, the unit in pyramids deciphers the functions of a pyramid through reference to mythology, historic documents, and other resources. In other words, resources from other disciplines were borrowed in an effort to understand an architectural structure. The unit on the French Revolution most closely approximates an interdisciplinary unit, as it includes an analysis of the impact of eighteenth-century philosophical ideals on visual art and music. The units on Realism and Idealism were very slanted toward the visual arts: the unit on realism was entirely taken up by a discussion of da Vinci, while the unit on Michelangelo explicated the Neoplatonic elements of his painting and statuary. According to William Newell's criteria for interdisciplinarity, these units of the course were not fully interdisciplinary, as one disciplinary perspective tended to dominate the analysis. Other disciplinary resources were borrowed but not employed on an equal level.
The units on Art and the Ordered Cosmos and Art as Self-Expression came much closer to exemplifying an interdisciplinary approach. In the Art and the Ordered Cosmos unit, students explored several disciplinary resources in the modules on Japan, including the ways in which film, social customs, and art reflected religious traditions. In the module on the European Mechanistic universe, students explored the ways in which landscape gardens, poetry, and music reflected eighteenth-century philosophy and science. In the Art as Self-Expression unit, students explored psychological, literary, religious, and artistic views of the self.
I do not think that having a wide array of models of integration is a bad thing at all; rather, I think that students grasp interdisciplinarity better when they are provided with several different models of integration that progressively build to full interdisciplinarity. Clearly, the success of the course in developing the ability to integrate disciplinary resources, as seen on the final exams of several students, suggests that the inclusion of a variety of models of integration did not detract from the overall product. In fact, research suggests that creativity, for example, is possible only after a thorough grounding in basics. David Sills, in "Integrative Thinking: Synthesis and Creativity in Interdisciplinary Studies," argues that various models of creativity may provide insight into the nature of integrative thought. Sills points out that research into creativity suggests that it occurs in stages, and that "without the initial idea or impetus, without saturation in the ideas, the background, the culture, and the social order, and without time to allow creativity to occur, creativity cannot occur ..." (1) If one accepts Sills's argument that creativity is an apt analogue for integrative thought, then it is important for students to have a strong foundation on which to build, and ideally, this foundation should include a wide array of integrative models. Moreover, just as some theorists argue that creativity progresses in stages, the ability to think in an integrative fashion may also occur in stages. Exposing students to the various "levels of integration" described by modern interdisciplinarians may perhaps be a very effective way to promote integrative thinking.
Modifications to the Course in the Spring 2000
Nevertheless, the results of the surveys did give me pause for thought, and inspired me to find ways to highlight the diversity of disciplines in the IDST 2310 course. There were, in fact, many ways to develop the interdisciplinarity into the course. Since I piloted the course in Fall 1998, I had felt that music was underrepresented. This was not due to lack of background on my part, as I have an undergraduate degree in Piano Performance, but rather lack of time in the course itself to cover materials as much in-depth as I would like. It was also due to my own concerns with explaining musical concepts to a class of primarily non-musicians. Several students in our IDST 2305 Gothic Imagination course have found the musical portions of the course very difficult; in fact, one of my student respondents in this course mentioned that very problem.
However, having piloted in Fall 1999 a sample mini-unit on color in music, I discovered that students were receptive to and able to intellectually manage broad musical concepts. Further, I began to think of various other ways of introducing music into the course. The "color in music" unit was a discussion of musical analogues of color aesthetics in art; in the spring 2000, I expanded this unit and also implemented a unit on musical analogues to shape, line, and texture in art. My exploration of ways to integrate music also inspired other ideas, such as the introduction of poetry, also underrepresented in the course, to the unit on rhythm. This discussion formed a new and very thoroughly interdisciplinary unit called "the elements of art" in which students became more aware of the different disciplinary resources used.
This approach was also added to the unit on art as self-expression. I added a unit on Romanticism in art, music, and literature, which will refer back to the interdisciplinary discussion of color, line, shape, texture, and rhythm of the introductory unit.
There are also other units, such as the discussion of Realism, in which only art was discussed; during the spring 2000, I added a study of Realism in literature and artc, creating a more interdisciplinary approach.
In the Spring 2000 syllabus there is a much more concerted effort to incorporate the perspectives of music, literature, and other disciplines. There is much more attention paid to creating more fully interdisciplinary units where appropriate, so that no one perspective is dominant. Further, the results of the survey suggest that there needs to be more attention paid to the methodology of the disciplines themselves. In IDST 2310, the opening unit on Paleolithic cave art discusses the notion of the primary source in history, and then ways to interpret art as a form of historic document. There is a clear discussion of the ways history relies upon the written word whereas art is visual and symbolic. This is a clear example of different disciplinary methodology; in the last unit on art as self-expression, there is also a discussion of the self from a psychological, religious, literary, and artistic perspective. These units offer opportunities for clarifying diverse methodologies, and more attention was paid to creating further opportunities in subsequent semesters.
Another issue in the fall 1999 was the design of the examinations. Most of the exam questions tended to focus on a particular module within the main units (see Exam I and Exam II); students basically were required to master a particular unit for each essay. The results of the survey highlighted for me the ways in which this course was not fulfilling the outcomes of an interdisciplinary course as well as it might. Therefore, during the spring 2000, I redesigned the exams to require more synthesis of multiple units and also to incorporate more explicit reference to multiple disciplines in each requirement.
The frequent mention of active learning as a strong point of interdisciplinary courses also resulted in my attempting to incorporate more opportunities for active learning into the course. These were very valuable improvements, as will be seen from the differences in student perceptions and their work in spring 2000.
Interdisciplinarity, Pedagogy, Globalism, and Course Outcomes
Another question that arises as a result of this same feature of the student responses is whether it is the interdisciplinary aspect of the course, or the active learning modules, or the nature of the subject matter in the arts and humanities themselves that leads to their belief that this course provided greater opportunity for freedom of thought, a more personal approach, and fostered a greater sense of involvement in the course. Which of these elements is the most significant, or are they all interrelated? Which of these elements contributes to which characteristic?
Comparing these student responses to those of students in IDST 2205: Global Issues in Society, only two of the forty students mentioned being more involved in the course as a descriptive factor or an outcome of IDST courses. Several students, on the other hand, did mention becoming acquainted with global culture and issues as a characteristic of their IDST course; this is comparable to responses in IDST 2310. Similarly, seven respondents in the IDST 2205 course mentioned greater tolerance for diverse perspectives and opinions as an outcome of their experience; this is also a response that was common in the IDST 2310 course. The difference between the two sets of responses, however, is that while approximately 1/3 of the respondents to IDST mentioned hands-on experiences and frequent interaction between instructors and students as a characteristic of IDST courses and often linked these characteristics to a sense of greater involvement, only two of the IDST 2205 respondents mentioned involvement as a feature of an IDST course.
This particular section of the IDST 2205 course was taught by a team of faculty who were very teacher-centered in their approach; while they often solicited responses from students, these were in the nature of requests for specific factual information rather than eliciting debate on a significant issue. Some activities other than lecturing occurred in the course, but the ones observed were worksheet-type activities rather than ones that demanded application of abstract ideas.
Comparison of the responses between these two courses would suggest that students are, in fact, encouraged to develop greater tolerance for diversity from courses that have a global perspective. Both sets of students reported greater open-mindedness as an outcome of exposure to various cultural perspectives and issues. A global approach clearly contributes to the overall outcomes of an interdisciplinary course. Global focus alone, however, does not produce the sense of personal involvement or engagement with material reflected by the IDST 2310 students. Preliminary examination of these survey results would suggest that it is not the interdisciplinary juxtaposition of diverse perspectives nor the diverse global perspectives that produces greater sense of personal involvement, but rather teaching styles that incorporate opportunities for active and applied learning.
Another significant difference between the two sets of responses is the frequent mention in the IDST 2310 (Fine and Applied Arts in Civilization) course surveys of a journey of self-awareness or discovery. This was an outcome never mentioned in the IDST 2205 Global Issues course surveys. Perhaps this is due to a difference in disciplinary perspectives of the arts and humanities as opposed to the social sciences, as well as to topics covered in the course. As mentioned above, however, the IDST 2310 course has several units which elicit reflection on the self, whereas the IDST 2205 course does not. Here, these outcomes would seem to be products of the course topics and materials as opposed to differences in interdisciplinary outlook.
Comparison of the two sets of surveys suggests that pedagogy is an important tool for enhancing a sense of involvement and personal interaction with material; they would also suggest that different courses naturally produce different sets of outcomes and that this is obviously dependent on their subject matter. In other words, interdisciplinarity alone does not produce many of the perceptions mentioned in the surveys. Although these perceptions often are in harmony with ideal outcomes of interdisciplinary courses described in the literature, such as greater empathy, tolerance for diverse perspectives, and independent thinking, use of a great deal of active and collaborative learning in the Fine and Applied Arts course and the global perspective of both of the courses seems to be more closely tied to student perceptions of interdisciplinary courses and the positive outcomes as reported by students in the Fall 1999 semester survey than the interdisciplinarity of the courses themselves. Further, the kind of responses students made to question 1 were almost universally connected to their personality traits as shown on the JPIs. In what ways could I capitalize on these findings in order to stimulate students to become more aware of the interdisciplinary methods of the course and to be willing to apply what these methods to other contexts?
Survey results, however, are not the only aspect of the course that should be considered. As seen earlier, 16 of 25 students who took the pre- and post-test MER made significant gains on the domain 1 scores from their pre-tests to their post-tests. This particular domain measures student awareness of alternatives, and this result alone would suggest some signifcant success that can be directly tied to the interdisciplinarity of the course. Of the students who took both the pre- and post-test MERs, scores in domains scores in domains 1,3,5,and 6 increased while 2 and 4 remained relatively the same. Mean scores for the class as a whole increased on domains 1,2,5,and 6, while domains 3 and 4 remained at approximately the same level.
Of the 16 students whose scores increased on domain 1, their mean increase was a startling 1.1.3.
Further, average grades on exams increased from the mean on the first midterm of 75.75, to the second midterm mean of 77.22, to the final exam mean of 85.08. Clearly, the course was successful in developing the interdisciplinary and analytical skills of students across the semester.
These issues will be topics for further exploration in my discussion of the revised course piloted in the spring and fall 2000.
Notes
2. David Sills, "Integrative Thinking: Synthesis and Creativity in Interdisciplinary Studies, " in The Journal of General Education vol 45 no. 2 (1996), 140.
To further explore my reflection on fall 1999 course outcomes, please continue on to
Student
concepts of interdisciplinarity
Student
perceptions of the role of pedagogical techniques
Student
comments on the impact of this course on other areas of their studies
or lives
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