Reconceiving our approach

1. What we took the integrative learning project to be and what we sought to integrate

We saw the e-portfolio as a mechanism that would provide students a framework within which to integrate their learning in general education, major and elective courses, as well as providing the occasion to reflect on University Studies goals as they influence students' lives both inside and outside the classroom. The e-portfolio would aid in

...establishing connections between the levels of University Studies: Freshman Inquiry, Sophomore Inquiry, cluster courses and the senior Capstone.

...more effectively connecting students who transfer "mid-stream" into a general education program that is designed as continuous from Freshman Inquiry to the senior Capstone.

...connecting students' prior knowledge and ways of making sense to the methods characteristic of the social sciences, humanities and fine arts, and the natural sciences.

...allowing students the experience of moving from the first steps of open-ended inquiry to the production and selective display of various finished products: papers, art work, audio files, PowerPoint or Keynote presentations and the like.

...providing students the challenge of deciding for themselves what parts of their work—and their integrative reflections upon it—they wished to make public.

And thus the project framework we put in place.

2. The e-portfolio as integrative framework: a brief summary to date

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

• At the beginning of the integrative learning project, first year students were already creating website-based e-portfolios.

• There was no system allowing students to continue their e-portfolios past that first, yearlong course.

* We would need an accessible system that can work over time and allow for the integration of transfer students.

• The system we chose to carry out the expansion pilot is the Open Source Portfolio (OSP). The university is currently also piloting Sakai, an open source course management platform, that is the base for OSP.

• PSU will be introducing a common portal for students that is also an open source platform, uPortal. It makes sense to us that all of the platforms the university employs be connected and able to use and transfer information among the kinds of data and material each houses.

THE IMPLEMENTATION

• Spring 2005: OSP pilot in 8 courses—our evaluation of portfolio as integration-enhancement framework was hampered by technical difficulties with pre-release OSP software

• Summer 2005: OSP pilot with 2 courses—evaluation data for 25 portfolios (16 positive experiences; 9 negative)

• Fall 2005: OSP pilot was not completed due to lack of IT support

• Winter 2005: a decision is made to delay further pilot studies until Fall 2006, when OSP software will integrate with course management software (July 15, 2006)

3. The increasingly disparate disciplinary participation in SINQ

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As these data indicate, the natural science-oriented Sophomore Inquiries are substantially fewer in number than those that are social sciences/humanities- and fine arts-oriented (the latter three combined because those Inquiries are often sufficiently interdisciplinary that disciplinary distinctions are hard to come by). The total Inquiry number projected for 2008-2009 presumes implementation of the recommendation (from the committee that reviewed University Studies during the 2005-2006 academic year) that all students take one SINQ each from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities-fine arts, and that all upper division transfer students take the SINQ gateway course for the cluster they pursue. The projection for 2008-2009 shows that the natural sciences would have to triple their commitment to Sophomore Inquiry to establish parity.

The growing disparity at the sophomore level is exhibited at the upper division as well. In 1997-1998 the upper division cluster courses were derived from the humanities-fine arts, social sciences, and natural sciences in a ratio of 5.3 to 3.3 to 1. Since then the ratio has shifted dramatically. Aggregated data through summer term 2004 show that for every one natural science course offering there are over thirteen social science courses and five courses from the humanities-fine arts (or, in the same order as above, 4.8 to 13.4 to 1).

4. Passing the Inquiry courses to contingent faculty

5. The shift to contingent faculty and its effect

We face at least two important questions:

• Whom do we recruit—and how?

• What are the implications for general education of a two-tier faculty?

—The downside: insufficient connection to departments and discipline, insecurity, low morale, and more generally, inequality of labor conditions as compared to tenure-related faculty

—The upside: lots of talent, freedom to innovate (because lacking the possible constraints of departments), we have of working to redefine what David Downing (in his recent book) calls the knowledge contract

6. Another dis/integrative condition: mismatch between pedagogy and student learning

During spring term 2006 we sent email surveys to over 5000 students taking upper division cluster courses. We received over 900 replies. Among the questions posed were a number that asked students to indicate which pedagogies were utilized in their courses and to rank them on a Likert scale as to their contribution to student learning. Those data are summarized below. We have taken the liberty of calculating the difference between the scores for each pedagogy and then ranking the pedagogies as a function of the degree of mismatch between contribution to learning and the frequency with which they are used in courses. As you can see, one might conclude that the pedagogies which ought to be used more often (given that the students say they help their learning) are those which characterize our Freshman and Sophomore Inquiry as well as Capstone courses. Those pedagogies which ought to be used less often are those predominant in conventional courses—which cluster courses are (given that they have been designed as department courses first and modified for University Studies second).

7. University Studies under scrutiny and dis/integrative suggestions for change

The study of University Studies in 2005-2006 produced a number of recommendations, including two that

• Removing the graduate mentors from Sophomore Inquiry

—dramatically changes the tenor of these courses given that mentors have often helped to facilitate interdisciplinary inquiry, use of journals, explanations of the coherence intended amongst the levels of University Studies, and much else

—removes the personnel we counted on to facilitate student e-portfolio work by helping students develop substantive, rich portfolios (a support especially needed for transfer students)

• Collecting the existing Sophomore Inquiry/Clusters into three groups defined by method: the social sciences, the humanities/fine arts, and the natural sciences and engineering

—runs afoul of the disparate disciplinary participation in University Studies

—does not account for the fact that many current clusters are significantly interdisciplinary and those won't fit back into a conventional distribution model