Using Research to Bring Interactive Learning Strategies into General Education Mega-Courses
By Edward Prather. Peer Review, Summer 2011, Vol 13 No. 3
The college-level general education (GE) curriculum in the United States can have many goals: exposing students to the breadth of human thoughts and ideas; elevating their reading comprehension, writing abilities, evaluation of information and complex systems, critical reasoning skills; and providing an understanding of and appreciation for subjects outside of their chosen field of study. Unfortunately, the majority of this learning takes place in large enrollment courses. Therefore, as educators and researchers from many fields have documented, students often emerge from our courses without a deeper understanding of, or appreciation for, our disciplines. Further, they fail to acquire the skills and abilities we have worked so hard to help them develop. How, then, can we expect these students to go out into society and successfully engage with, and help solve, the complex and critical problems that face our nation?
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