Reflection on Fall 1999 Course Outcomes
Student awareness of diverse disciplinary approaches | The Fine and Applied Arts vs. The Global Issues Course | Pedagogy, globalism, and course outcomes
Conclusions
Awareness of Diverse Disciplinary Perspectives in the Fine and Applied Arts vs. the Global Issues Courses?
Student responses to the end-of-the-semester survey in the IDST 2205: Global Issues course were 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 the similarity of methodology of the disciplines makes the perspectives hard to distinguish. These results strongly correlated with the results of the IDST 2310 survey.
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.
Interdisciplinarity, Pedagogy, Globalism, and Course Outcomes
An important question that arose after comparison of the data from IDST 2310 and IDST 2205 is exactly which aspects of IDST courses lead to outcomes charted in the national literature, such as student beliefs that these courses provide 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 the student responses from IDST 2310 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 2310 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 discussed in the reflection on outcomes for the IDST 2310 Fine and Applied Arts course, that 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 surveys 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 we 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? Significant revisions to the IDST 2310 course were undertaken in subsequent semesters; while I have not myself taught the Global Issues, this semester's research did suggest possible areas of change in terms of pedagogy and structure.
To further explore my reflection on fall 1999 course outcomes for both courses, 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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