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, 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 – 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 two- question survey at 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 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. E- mails are welcome anytime and can be addressed to GEAR committee chair Elisabeth Harrington at