1. What Historians Talk About When We Talk About General Education
Dan McInerney
Utah State University

2. TEACHING & LEARNING
INITIATIVES
5 C’s of
Historical Thinking

3. Big themes from big projects
“my course” ➙ “our curriculum” make the implicit explicit intentionality

4. One student responded: "Will I find serious and meaningful ones?"
“Professors Share: The Moment That Changed the Way I Teach,”
Chronicle of Higher Education (December 5, 2018),
Like many college professors, I find the rhetoric of "outputs" and "outcomes" artificial, a fake metric that feeds the bureaucratic machine. Six or seven years ago, I mentioned this to an undergraduate class at Duke University.
I said: "You will not find any trite and clichéd ‘outcomes’ on my syllabus."
One student responded: "Will I find serious and meaningful ones?"
Cathy Davidson
Graduate Center
CUNY

5. “Professors Share: The Moment That Changed the Way I Teach,”
Chronicle of Higher Education (December 5, 2018),
I realized that most students have no idea what they are supposed to be learning in a classroom beyond the "content" level –
nor do they know why the content is valid in and of itself nor what use or application or purpose it will have beyond the final exam.
Cathy Davidson
Graduate Center
CUNY

6. “my course” ➙ “our curriculum” make the implicit explicit
How might we apply our big themes?
  “my course” ➙ “our curriculum”
make the implicit explicit
intentionality
3 suggestions

7. Including Gen Ed

8. 2. INTRODUCTORY COURSES:
\THE PERFECT PLACE TO DEMYSTIFY OUR DISCIPLINE
AND THE HISTORY, PURPOSE, AND GOALS OF GENERAL EDUCATION
-Address students’ uncertainty / confusion / frustration about Gen Ed
First slide in my Gen Ed history course . . .

9. WHY AM I IN THIS COURSE?

10. 2. INTRODUCTORY COURSES:
PERFECT PLACE TO DEMYSTIFY PROGRAMS AND THE HISTORY, PURPOSE, AND GOALS OF PROGRAMS AND GENERAL EDUCATION
-Address students’ uncertainty / confusion / frustration about Gen Ed
-Explain the reasons for Gen Ed
-Explain what a discipline produces for GE
-Explain what a discipline consumes from GE
-Explain the transferable skills students develop in YOUR course

11. 3. THE MULTIPLE CONTEXTS
OF OUR INTRO COURSES

12. THE MULTIPLE CONTEXTS
OF OUR INTRO COURSES

13. THE MULTIPLE CONTEXTS
OF OUR INTRO COURSES

14. THE MULTIPLE CONTEXTS OF OUR INTRO COURSES
and understand who your students are in those contexts

15. KEY QUESTION: When students complete the intro course, what should they know, understand, and be able to do?