Thematic Pathways Revisited
The PSU General Education Committee is starting the conversation in earnest about what Gen Ed thematic pathways might look like. I wrote about this earlier this month, placing my thoughts…
Design as a Component of General Education
I have long been interested in design. I started my career as a computer scientist. I had fallen in love with programming at the age of 15 and wanted to…
Connected Learning: Thematic Pathways in General Education
I have been doing a lot of presentations and having a lot of conversations about General Education at PSU and its relationship to our Integrated Cluster Initiative. In particular, we…
Communicating about General Education
Communicating about all the exciting things happening in General Education at Plymouth State University has been a major focus of my work for the past couple of weeks. I have…
Integrated Capstone Course for General Education
One of the President's Four Tools of Clusters is an integrated capstone experience for all students. PSU's Integration Connection (INCO) course was originally designed to be a capstone course for…
Advocating for “Open”
Because NH students have the highest student loan debt in the country, I think every instructor in public higher education in the state has an obligation to minimize student expenses…
Integrated Clusters, General Education, and the Creative Commons
Plymouth State University's president came to campus three years ago with a vision that, at the time, he called "Strategic Clusters" (which has since been rebranded as "Integrated Clusters"). I…
Why is PSU Moving to Clusters?
President Birx wrote a blog post (which I've referenced more times than I can count) about the Four Tools of Clusters. It's important to note that three of the four…
The New Education: First Year Seminar
I've been busy for the last month or so IndieWebifying my web site. That's been really fun. But I've also been started planning for my new position as Coordinator of…
Goal Setting and Institutional Change
I've been thinking about institutional change a lot lately. As I move into my new role as the Coordinator of General Education at Plymouth State University, I've been thinking about…
The New Education
I recently read The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University and Prepare Students For a World in Flux by Cathy N. Davidson. Davidson has long been an academic hero…
Students’ Signature Work: Conference Debrief
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Davis Educational Foundation sponsored a one day institute in Boston this weekend for institutions of higher education who want to…
Experience Design
In my last blog post, I wrote about Making Things and Drawing Boundaries, a great collection of essays written by practitioners of digital humanities. When I first encountered the book's…
Making Things and Drawing Boundaries
If you read my About the Author page, you will see that I have a BA, an MS, and a PhD, all in Computer Science. What you won't see is…
Assessment That Works
We at Plymouth State University have been talking about appropriate assessment of our General Education program for most of the 20 years that I have been here. When we instituted…
B is for Belonging
Last week, I wrote a post reviewing the book The ABCs of How We Learn. The book provides a ton of information about learning science, including practical advice about how…
The ABCs of How We Learn
I've just finished reading the second book on my sabbatical list. The ABCs of How We Learn: 26 Scientifically Proven Approaches, How They Work, and When to Use Them was…
Creating OERs with Students
With the end of the Fall 2017 semester, I want to record my thoughts about creating the open educational resource (OER) Introduction to Media Studies with students in CM2770 (Intro to Media…
Advising and General Education
The General Education Committee held a town hall on Friday, December 8, to discuss the President's idea of theming General Education. He has written in his blog that "while individual…
Guest Post from Alex Richard
A couple of weeks ago, my First Year Seminar (FYS) classes discussed ways that we might assess the learning outcome in our class related to General Education. In particular, at…
