Notes Towards Day 22: Evaluating Bryn Mawr's Current Curriculum

I. Coursekeeping
Due by 9 a.m. Sun, 11/22: 3-pp.
collaborative analyses of Bryn Mawr's curriculum,
in light of the research conducted by your classmates last week,
our visit with Karen, reports on current local efforts,
and our readings on national attempts to revise the college curriculum.

Think about the questions being posed
to the "Thinking Forward" group:
Why do private liberal arts colleges cost so much?
What is their continued relevance?
How well do they prepare their graduates for the jobs of the future?
How to address the "exacerbations" of being single-sex,
small-sized, w/ "modest discretionary resources"?
Think boldly, comprehensively and forward....!
Don't "fiddle"!

For Tuesday, read Haidt's “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail,"
which will do to psychology what McIntosh did to history:
offer a challenge to the way things have been done,
and talked about, and researched, and taught.

Upcoming after break:
2 class days workshopping these projects

Draft the opening paragraph of your upcoming paper: your re-envisioned mission-or-vision, and a description of the major change you expect to recommend. Conduct a survey among approx. 40 students (10 in each class?) and 10 professors (the others each of you is working w/ this semester?). Decide what sort of feedback you want: on a scale? in a paragraph, a qualitative response? Post the results of your survey on-line before class on Thursday, Dec. 3.

Tues, Dec. 8 Group Conferences on your collaborative papers

Thurs, Dec. 10 Final Performances

Fri, Dec. 11:

By 12:30 p.m. Friday, December 18:
Collaboratively written 6-pp curriculum design,
submitted in your final portfolio, including checklist
& self-evaluation, all postings and papers already
written for the course, and one revision.

II. What discussion do we need to
have about working in small groups?

My own (3 current) collaborative writing projects;
last year's publications:
On Beyond Interdisciplinarity, Journal of Research Practice
Special Issue of Soundings on Emergence theory
academic work seen more generally...

II. What you saw when cf'ing old and new requirements w/ our mission:
Julie on the souring of Bi-Co relations
Hoang, Kathy, Alicia all champion "shortening the requirements";
Eva was "grateful" for them as they stand (except language!).

Julia, Ellen, Katie, Rebecca didn't see much change:
Julia: The difference between the approaches of the two sets of requirements does not seem that great-- the proposed requirements simply aim more directly at the ideas in the mission statement.
Ellen: When I looked at the new proposed requirements, I felt as if they were almost the exact same requirements with different names. This does not seem like the purpose of coming up with new requirements. That is simply rearranging rather than innovating.
Katie: The new curriculum is very similar, and doesn't really represent a "changed path" towards the mission statement.  The requirements are stated in ambiguous terms, and are not as straight-forward as the current stated requirements for the college.
Rebecca:  The revised requirements that have been proposed to the college really do not change anything or do a better job of creating a modern curriculum. The new distributional requirements have essentially the same rules as the old ones, with only one fewer required class. Like we talked about in class, these changes are all just "fiddling." So maybe we need to do something more radical.

Anna and Hilary raised questions about self-determination:
Anna: By allowing students to pick their own classes, I think that people become academically myopic, but having too much structure reduces their happiness and intellectual exploration....I don’t think [the new requirements] add anything different or innovative to the current curriculum.  In fact, I felt more confused than enlightened by them.  I felt that the terms used to describe the requirements were vague, and I also felt a little patronized by them.... I couldn’t shake the sense that the college was beginning to cater more to making students happy with simplicity and a lessened workload. I think eliminating the two-class requirement for the Divisional Requirements dishonors Bryn Mawr’s mission statement concerning a “rigorous education”, and I also believe that it does a disservice to preparing students for life and work.

Hilary: it is a tradeoff, between trusting the student body to become of its own mission statement, or of the school to enforce what mission it should like us to represent.

III. Further responses to Karen's visit and report on local efforts?

IV. Turning back to your earlier research, and to our earlier
readings: what did you learn?? that you can apply here???

The National Academy for Academic Leadership says to
pay attention to philosophy, clear goals, theoretical soundness,
rational sequence, assessment, advising...

Answers Corporation reviews the trends from content to competencies;
integration across the curriculum; diversity learning; and internationalization.
It looks @ curriculum coherence and integration (using learning comunities
and interdisciplinarity); @ innovative instructional methods; and
@ assessment of student learning.

Lamar Alexander argues for the cost-cutting 3-year degree.

Peggy McIntosh uses Meg, Jo, Amy and her daughters to walk her way
through 5   "Interactive Phases of (Personal and) Curricular Revision,"
asking repeatedly, What are the shaping dimensions of the discipline?
How must they change to reflect women's experience?