One suggestion that is being floated is to require instructors of GenEd courses to include the goals of the GenEd program in their syllabi. This has the twin virtues of being a lot of work and completely useless. As if something in the syllabus is liable to get the student's attention. If you have something really horrible that you'd like to keep secret, put it in your syllabus. I sometimes put my grading keys in my syllabus, where I know they will be safe from the prying eyes of the students.
Not that I have a whole lot better suggestions. The fact is that a large group of students don't value a general education. This is true at any school I've ever been to. Hell, a good deal of our faculty only pay lip service to General Education. As long as we've got advisors who say things like, "OK, let's sign you up for an Ethnic Studies course and get it out of the way," we're going to keep seeing that attitude in students.
One thing that's working against us is the smorgasbord nature of our GenEd requirements. Three courses from these three areas, and two from these three, and at least two lab sciences. Nothing hangs together. There's no opportunity to say to the students, "Here's how all of these various ideas add up to being a well-educated person." Some students figure it out on their own, sooner or later. But many just don't. I don't know if we can change that. Certainly not by including it in the syllabus.
technorati tag: teaching-carnival
1 comments:
We have the same issues on my campus, and we also have people who think putting info in the syllabus about why Gen Ed is good for students is the answer. I'm with you--it won't make a difference (except to add to add work for faculty). I don't have answers either, beyond abstract ones like "kick off a culture shift." Good luck figuring it out at your institution--and if you do figure out what works, post something for the rest of us. :)
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