| University Courses
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| Most introductory courses across the University (but particularly in Arts & Sciences) serve a wide range of students – majors completing degree requirements, upper-division students looking to fulfill areas of knowledge and other general education requisites, freshmen and sophomores investigating possible major options, and so forth. Our standard introductory courses are hard-pressed to serve all of these diverse populations well and may hinder learning by attempting to be all things to all students. While general education courses are designed to provide students with the broad foundations for learning that they will need to proceed to more in-depth studies within degree programs, many classes have had to bear the burden of serving dual purposes – providing foundational skills and introducing students to the more specific and focused areas of study required as introductions to majors. These “Big Ideas” courses – what we will call “University Courses” – are designed to relieve introductory courses of this burden, freeing them up to serve the purposes for which they were initially intended. Instead of focusing on the introduction to one field of study or disciplinary focus, University Courses will take as their point of departure some of the great questions and themes that have shaped the histories of human thought. These courses will be targeted to freshmen and sophomores, and will focus on broad inter-disciplinary themes. Specifically abandoning the misplaced assumption that a certain “amount” of material must be covered (as might be the case with some introduction to majors courses), these University Courses will provide faculty (either individual instructors or teams of faculty members) the opportunity to delve deeply into topic areas – addressing themes from multiple perspectives and perhaps differing disciplinary lenses. An important feature of University Courses will be the incorporation of collaborative learning through the use of linked courses. The University of Washington through its Interdisciplinary Writing Program (IWP) has been at the forefront of using linked experiences to enhance student learning. For nearly 30 years, IWP has shown how the instruction of writing can be enhanced and improved when learning occurs in “context” – specifically, when the subject matter students are asked to write about comes from the themes discussed within substantively-focused linked courses. We will build on the IWP experience and expand the current scope of linked courses in our curriculum. Specifically, rather than having traditional “break-out” discussion sections, each University Course will have supplemental links to courses involving the instruction in writing, public speaking, information fluency/literacy, or intergroup dialogue. These links will focus on the learning of these core competencies, using the content of the University Course as the focal point of exercises and assignments. The linked courses will be taken for credit – as an additional course. A critical cost savings therefore comes from the fact that we will be using TAs and other instructional resources that might normally be used to staff traditional discussion sections to teach these linked courses. Students will be earning a total of 10 credits through the University Course experience at substantially lower cost per student credit hour than even our most “inexpensive” course offerings. Linked courses have the added benefit
of making the experience of the University Course seem smaller.
Not unlike the FIG groups used for transitioning first-year students
into the university, linked courses will create small networks among
students that will help undergraduates find closer connections to
the UW intellectual community and to others who may share their
own academic interests. |
