the Interdisciplinary Studies program at PSU has been here since 1974.

Open textbook: our textbook is a mix of CC-licensed work from key established scholars and work written by undergraduates in our own program

But we do it by helping students see themselves as part of an academic community, and then leveraging the power of that community to support itself in the ways that it needs.

100% of students are admitted on their second try after receiving constructive feedback from our Council

this is clearly overstated

students in interdisciplinary fields that are well-established at other colleges but which Plymouth State,

retools program design in order to create more flexible structures to support degree completion and student agency.

Or will openness go down in the history books as just another fad that couldn’t live up to its press?

However, it is almost always the case that these products are commercialized in such a way that access is restricted to those who are willing to pay for them a second time. Why should we be required to pay a second time for the thing we’ve already paid for?

Open educational resources provide an immediate, proven way to make education significantly more affordable and accessible for students.

Today, the cost of having a 250-page book transcribed by hand is about $250. The cost of printing that same book with a print-on-demand service is about $5. The cost of copying an online version of that same book (e.g., an ePub file) is about $0.0008. The cost of shipping either the handwritten or printed book is about $5. The cost of distributing an electronic copy of the book over the Internet is approximately $0.0007.

the need for learning contexts that bring together in-school and out-of-school learning and activity.

The disciplines, where we find a wealth of specific knowledge, are the building blocks of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Charles Eliot (21st president of Harvard) gave a speech stating that there is no best method or focus for learning, therefore Harvard will have them all. 

link a broader and more diverse range of culture, knowledge, and expertise to educational opportunity.

The domains project isn’t revolutionary to the traditional classroom, but it is revolutionary to a classroom reimagined around public scholarship, student agency and experimentation.

to demonstrate and discuss, as fellow learners, how they have created and connected their own personal cyberinfrastructures

students not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking

progress means looping back to earlier ideas whose vitality and importance were unrecognized or underexplored at the time, and bringing those ideas back into play in a new context.

The “digital facelift” helped higher education deny both the needs and the opportunities emerging with this new medium.

The medium is the message.

their learning portfolio – can travel with them.

students have already developed rich social lives online and could use help, not punishment or paternalism, in understanding how to think through the data trails they’re leaving behind.

the domain and all its content are the student’s to take with them

safeguarding their data from advertisers as well as from unscrupulous people and companies.

fail to give students themselves a voice, let alone some assistance in deciding what to share online.

And then – contrary to what happens at most schools, where a student’s work exists only inside a learning management system and cannot be accessed once the semester is over – the domain and all its content are the student’s to take with them. It is, after all, their education, their intellectual development, their work.

Promoting digital ownership is different than assigning work in publicly accessible spaces.

The web is a network for conversations, and if students still see their audience as a teacher with a red pen, then nothing changes.

The first type of ‘Domain’ took audience into account, considering the implications of public scholarship, representation, and student agency. The second, in many ways, mirrored the traditional pedagogical structure by assigning papers or short answer assignments to be posted online through blogs.

“To own one’s domain gives students an understanding of how Web technologies work. It puts them in a much better position to control their work, their data, their identity online.”

It is a living portfolio, my representation in the digital world.

To own one’s domain gives students an understanding of how Web technologies work. It puts them in a much better position to control their work, their data, their identity online.

Education technology – and more broadly, the culture of education – does a terrible job with this sort of portability and interoperability. When a student moves to a new school, for example, they often have to request their transcript, a document that lists their courses and their grades.

And if a student owns their own domain, as she moves from grade to grade and from school to school, all that information – their learning portfolio – can travel with them.

we talked a lot more about technical issues (backup, recovery, privacy options, hosting laws in different countries, etc). But we also talked a lot more about digital citizenship, safety, control, design, etc. The kids saw the site much more as their own and their responsibility.”

One student uses her domain to showcase her artwork.

Having one’s own domain means that students have much more say over what they present to the world, in terms of their public profiles, professional portfolios, and digital identities.

Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium.

but their own domain – the dot com (or dot net, etc) of the student’s choosing.

Today, UMW and a growing number of other schools believe that students need a proprietary online space in order to be intellectually productive.

Students have little agency when it comes to education technology – much like they have little agency in education itself.

She thereby enriches the perspective on each subject that she brings to students with knowledge drawn from the others and offering an example of another approach: the joint appointment of faculty members to several departments.

Unless we help our students acquire their own identity, they will end up at the mercy of experts — or worse, at the mercy of charlatans posing as experts

The total amount of collected information doubles every two or three years.

"A technical problem of transportation, such as the building of a freeway, becomes a land-use problem, linked with economic, environmental, conservation, ethical, and political issues. Can we really draw a boundary? When we ask to improve a situation, particularly if it is a public one, we find ourselves facing not a problem, but a cluster of problems ... and none of these problems can be tackled using linear or sequential methods."

the complexity of the world requires us to have a better understanding of the relationships and connections between all fields that intersect and overlap

In fact, mass higher education is heading toward what I call the Home Depot approach to education, where there is no differentiation between consumption and digestion, or between information and learning, and no guidance -- or even questioning — about what it means to be an educated and cultured person.

Today's students fulfill general-education requirements, take specialized courses in their majors, and fill out their schedule with some electives, but while college catalogs euphemistically describe this as a "curriculum," it is rarely more than a collection of courses, devoid of planning, context, and coherence

For most students, college is a time for self-discovery, for developing passionate interests, and for trying to weave them into a meaningful career.

Communicating with another discipline requires time and work. An extensive effort must be made to learn the language of another field and to teach others the language of one's own. Many have recognized that this barrier must be overcome before successful collaboration can occur

Funding agencies and universities should remove the barriers to interdisciplinary research and training.

The cross-departmental nature of interdisciplinary research is likely to compound the problems of allocation of credit and research resources when grants are funded across departments or schools.

bringing people together through the creation of central facilities or common areas can increase its probability.

To coordinate the efforts of a diverse team requires credibility as a research scientist, skill in modulating strong personalities, the ability to draw out individual strengths, and skill in the use of group dynamics to blend individual strengths into a team.

Good communication skills are helpful in alleviating such problems, but most members of interdisciplinary teams lack training and proficiency in such skills.

To work together, people must understand and appreciate the value and limitations of both their own and others' methods.

We speak the language of our discipline, which raises two problems: first, we may not understand the languages of the other disciplines; second, more dangerously, we may think that we understand these, but do not, because although the same terms are used in different disciplines, they mean something very different in each.

they would be lost in a team effort and “lose their professional identity.”

most significant scientific problems cannot be accommodated within arbitrary disciplinary structures.”

Encouraging students to reach beyond the typical constraints of a single contentarea and engage in interdisciplinary learning fosters critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication skills

real-world events because such events are not typically solitary;rather they contain multiple interrelated issues that shouldbe addressed simultaneously to arrive ata solution.

When students reach a newlevel, an entirely new set of challenges should bepresented, once again slightly above their existing level of competence.

employersacross the United States, the most important skills cited werecritical thinking, creativity, collaboration, oral and written communication.

Students enrolled in interdisciplinaryprograms see instructorsas theymodel continued learning, have an opportunity to build upon their individual strengths and become personally invested in their work.

Real world problems “rarely arise within orderly disciplinary categories, and neither do their solutions

The modern mind divides, specializes, thinks in categories: the Greek instinct was the opposite, to take the widest view, to see things as an organic whole.

those who stop at the disciplinary edge run the risk of tunnel vision

Most observers of the creative moment concur: "The clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures--of two galaxies, so far as that goes--ought to produce creative chances. In the history of mental activity that has been where some of the break-throughs came"

In academic discourse, interdisciplinarity typically applies to four realms: knowledge, research, education, and theory.

Students are highly motivated as they have a vested interest in pursuing topics that are interesting to them. As a result, the content is often rooted in life experiences, giving an authentic purpose for the learning and connecting it to a real world context. Consequently, the learning becomes meaningful, purposeful and deeper resulting in learning experiences that stay with the student for a lifetime.

the theory assumes that we are active creators of our own knowledge requiring students to ask questions, explore, and assess what is known or learned.

their learning is deepened when they reflect on the connections between what they are learning in different disciplines.

This type of study allows the student to learn by making connections between ideas and concepts across different disciplinary boundaries. Students learning in this way are able to apply the knowledge gained in one discipline to another different discipline as a way to deepen the learning experience.

Because at the end of the day, your opinion and your thoughts matter, and you need to make those important to you before they are important to anyone else

As an interdisciplinary Studies major

Entrepreneurship of the Cannabis Industry

I carefully designed a program incorporating a series of art education classes such as instructional planning, curriculum and assessment, methods and materials and intro to art education

The classes that I need to take now need to help me with my future career and family advocacy; classes that touch upon Social work as well. One Social work class that I plan on taking in the Spring is SW3130 Child Welfare and Family Services. My WECO course Is HE3220 Applied Nutrition for a Healthy Living. I will complete my WRCO and QRCO in the Spring semester. My QRCO class will be SS3700 Social Statistics, and my WRCO credit will be completed with HE3240 Health Promotion Planning and Evaluation.  The class I think I will benefit the most from is SW 3150 Child Maltreatment.

Our society is only starting to get the ball rolling on interdisciplinary communication.

The medical field is most likely one of the most specialized fields in the world, even though it seems the human body and its complex systems would be the number one use for interdisciplinary study.

The medical field is most likely one of the most specialized fields in the world, even though it seems the human body and its complex systems would be the number one use for interdisciplinary study.

This was weird to think of how they are able to still make a social connection when in competition. I suppose for the sake of professionalism they are able to join together and share theory and knowledge about their field.

Many people as students observe professors and teachers in high school and middle school as being a part of individual social groups, kind of like cliques.

What was interesting to me was thinking about disciplines outside of education and how they interact with each other and in which ways they belong to a social community.

It justified the movement known as modernism.

Discipline was introduced as “discipline” by the Romans and was originally applied to the professions because of the need that was perceived to relate education to specific political, economic, and ecclesiastical ends.

Discipline was introduced as “discipline” by the Romans and was originally applied to the professions because of the need that was perceived to relate education to specific political, economic, and ecclesiastical ends.

At the same time, differences developed with each new era of collegiate growth, but the story has remained one of expanding access.

In other words, the aspiration and ability of the American postsecondary institutions to accommodate some approximation of universal access has been its foremost characteristic. Institutions' shortfalls in completely achieving that aspiration have been the major source of criticism and debate within American higher education. It is the perpetual American dilemma of how achieve both equality and excellence.

the proliferation of huge football stadiums

One of the biggest shifts was the federal government becoming directly involved in higher education, which developed during the Civil War when southern congressmen who opposed the legislation were absent. The Morrill Act of 1862 set in motion an elaborate program whereby states received profits from the sale of an allotted portion of western lands if used to establish programs of agricultural, mechanical, and military sciences, along with liberal arts.

"Souls?!? Damn your souls! Make tobacco."

Colleges and universities spend about $26 billion per year on research and development, of which $16 billion comes from federal agencies.

Only white Christian males were allowed to matriculate. Women and African-Americans were denied participation by statute and custom, but colleges did serve Native Americans in a missionary capacity.

Unlike many other countries, there is no national system of higher education in the U.S.

the Morrill Act of 1862

Each College or University has its own Unique Administrative Structure.

colleges began to broaden their focus to include education for the ministry, medicine and law.

In the same way that you were a plumber you could talk to an electrician about all kinds of things that you share that aren’t necessarily just about you two getting together and building a house. That might be the metaphor of the day.”

schools to pass on her knowledge to our future.

She is extremely proud of him so she displays his artwork all throughout her office!

Im not going to be a athletic trainer

She even described an interdisciplinary project that we will do as students working with artists, computer scientists, philosophers, and social scientists we will focus on a common theme resilience. We will learn how to work together despite our differences and we will learn how we can learn from each other which i expect to be an exciting project.

Amy was never outdoorsy when she was younger she had a lot of fears when it came to the outdoorsy stuff.

Assistant Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy

The lab was in Fox park so it was nice to walk through the park while doing our interview.

The

She is the professor of my Introduction to Environmental Science and Policy I class. The reason I chose Amy for the interview is because I know she is very experienced and involved in not only the field of environmental sciences but also biology and fields relative to what I would like to do. I didn’t know it before the interview but I found Amy to be quite interdisciplinary individual hearing about her studies, job experiences, and research projects.

This helped me to widen my knowledge to see things from a different perspective while adding my business operations perspective to the conversations.”

I would also suggest a class in public speaking and leadership skills.  These are skills that are transferable between fields and can make or break your career professionally.”

I have remained in majors that tie to business ever since.”

“We talk to students to show them and teach them how to integrate math and integrate movement into math and math into movement. Language arts reading being able to use your body to write letters to help kids reinforce what they learned in the classroom, in the gymnasium and for some kids they learn better that way. Some kids are kinesthetic learners than others. Science, art, music has a real big part.”

Her

With me trying to explore different areas of my Interdisplinary studies, I decide to interview Professor Lynn Johnson from Plymouth State University in the study of health and coaching. It was a nice lovely Thursday afternoon that I met her inside of her office. When I got into the office, I was looking around her room and I was fascinated with all the old things she had in her room.

Me: “Exactly, I think everyone should know that.”

I think a general biology course is important and definitely a course on how to write and how to communicate, definitely as much computer applications that you can get your hands on, and an art course too.”

When you go out in the real world, most people don’t just work within their field of study. You have to work with other people who weren’t in your direct field of study so knowing something about them and what they do is so important.”

“do physicians prescribe exercise for their patients who are obese as a means of treating the weight related illnesses?” This really interested me because it shows the importance of interdisciplinarity when working in a health related field – researchers, nurses, physicians, dietitians, social workers, and all other patient care staff must be aware of one another to give patient’s the best care possible.

It is important to understand that things are challenging, but it’s okay, you can make it through. Social work is a lot about helping others, and in order to help others, you first have to have an understanding of how people work, what they’re going to be feelings during this challenging time, and how you can utilize your resources to help them to the best of your abilities.

Which we’re not taught how to do.”

I wasn’t surprised at her answer of yes!

But something like a medical illustrator.

That last little touch made me laugh.  I was happy she mentioned that though.   I am awful at poetry.

Business people ask for biologists to create an ecosystem  pattern that the businesses can run from.  They put symbiosis to economic  models, the become entrepreneurs and they  try their hardest  to go eco-friendly.  Aside from business, mathematicians help out with the numbers side of phylogeny.  Geographers help out map out climates for these plants ecologists are studying.

It is a little spike that reaches for the sun so the animal can follow

As someone who has never conducted an interview, I quickly jumped into the first string of questions in order to avoid any awkward  silence.

and communication skills.

I have to say that a student centered environmentally stable learning community

Well, I actually had a hard time finding that balance between school and a social life. I actually ended up failing out of college my first time around. Eventually, I found something that I was emotionally connected to and school became much more enjoyable.

with me throughout my career.

authors

I think just connect

I met with “SFC A”

The student will have one to two more years of student loans, but come out earning the same salary.  The idea is that it will help athletic trainers know more so they can be better in the clinic.  In the practical world I am not seeing it so I am having a hard time agreeing with it. 

I believe a lot depends on the interest and direction a student wants to take. Anyone should take music or dance since it benefits someone physically, mentally and emotionally. It also helps give people the ability to think. I believe also that students should get a liberal arts and science education.

I am into the music department here at PSU, I also sing as well. I believe that music can help and enhance our health

My undergraduate degree was psychology and after I graduated, I did a program which gave me a certificate to teach elementary up to 8th grade students. For graduate school I studied Health Education.

Janis Bass

Wow! So you have some talents up your sleeve?

I even switched majors a couple times in college because the first year of pre-requisites were so hard

major.

I see everyone as an opportunity to learn more about myself, my practice, my clients and the people in my life and around me. I utilize all interactions as a means of gathering more information.

I think students in the nursing industry should take an Ethics course as well as a Philosophy course, just because we deal with so many different types of people it is very important to have an open mind when it comes to caring for people and I believe these courses play a large role in nursing

We all try to plan and escape together to relax because we understand the importance of taking a break and leaving work, well at work.”

were sociology and anthropology. She stresses the importance of understanding the different cultures around us.

not on a highly genuine learning instructor

Interview for Interviewing a Professor

Interview for Interviewing a Professor

For my interview

1) What was your path of education you took to get  to where you are now?

believed that students should take classes that trigger creativity and truly prepare you for your career.

“To own one’s domain gives students an understanding of how Web technologies work. It puts them in a much better position to control their work, their data, their identity online.”

Traditional assignments don’t necessarily empower students when they have to post them in a public space.

“To own one’s domain gives students an understanding of how Web technologies work. It puts them in a much better position to control their work, their data, their identity online.”

There is Violet Degnan and her project, “New Black Masculinity and Hip-hop.” Degnan places this piece within a network of links, articles, and images while also abiding by strict scholarly standards. Also explore the satirical online store by John Chavez, dubbed “Stitcht,” which ‘hacks’ digital conceptualizations of gender. These two projects engage in public scholarship in creative ways: Degnan’s project participates in the very public conversation surrounding black masculinity, while Chavez uses the form of a satirical store to force an audience to question their assumptions around the online economy.

’m not arguing against putting class assignments online, but the assignments must be framed by a conversation about audience and the way the ‘domain’ represents the author to that audience.

Can ‘ownership’ and ‘assignment’ go hand in hand?

How often do traditional ‘assignments’ misrepresent student interests, passion, and rigor?

The web is a network for conversations, and if students still see their audience as a teacher with a red pen, then nothing changes.

If no one wants to read the hastily constructed blog post for a class participation grade, then what is the purpose of making it public?

Traditional assignments don’t necessarily empower students when they have to post them in a public space.

“To own one’s domain gives students an understanding of how Web technologies work. It puts them in a much better position to control their work, their data, their identity online.”

I could even keep the domain after graduation. It is a living portfolio, my representation in the digital world.

While some schools are turning to social media monitoring firms to keep an eye on students online, rarely do schools give students the opportunity to demonstrate the good work that they do publicly.

By contrast, he introduced his students to open source platforms like WordPress, teaching them about Web standards like HTML and CSS.

the domain and all its content are the student’s to take with them. It is, after all, their education, their intellectual development, their work.

Giving students their own digital domain is a radical act. It gives them the ability to work on the Web and with the Web, to have their scholarship be meaningful and accessible by others. It allows them to demonstrate their learning to others beyond the classroom walls.

Education technology – and more broadly, the culture of education – does a terrible job with this sort of portability and interoperability.

something that they themselves can reflect upon, not simply grades and assignments that are locked away in a proprietary system controlled by the school.

While some schools are turning to social media monitoring firms to keep an eye on students online, rarely do schools give students the opportunity to demonstrate the good work that they do publicly.

These portfolios can contain text, images, video and audio recordings, giving students opportunities to express themselves in a variety of ways beyond the traditional pen-and-paper test or essay.

There’s some pushback against these proposals too, with arguments that restrictions on data might hinder research

a growing number of other schools believe that students need a proprietary online space in order to be intellectually productive.

the domain and all its content are the student’s to take with them. It is, after all, their education, their intellectual development, their work.

not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments…. Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium. Students would frame, curate, share, and direct their own ‘engagement streams’ throughout the learning environment.

Having one’s own domain means that students have much more say over what they present to the world, in terms of their public profiles, professional portfolios, and digital identities.

Within disciplines, of course, teaching should encourage students to draw knowledge together from many sources.

the complexity of the world requires us to have a better understanding of the relationships and connections between all fields that intersect and overlap

Today's students fulfill general-education requirements, take specialized courses in their majors, and fill out their schedule with some electives, but while college catalogs euphemistically describe this as a "curriculum," it is rarely more than a collection of courses, devoid of planning, context, and coherence.

On our campuses, we must create an intellectual climate that encourages faculty members and students to make connections among seemingly disparate disciplines, discoveries, events, and trends — and to build bridges among them that benefit the understanding of us all.

A reform agenda must also include the creation of a balance between specialists and generalists

Another promising avenue is the Carnegie Corporation of New York's "Teachers for a New Era" program, which includes top-level collaboration between university faculty members in the arts and sciences with those in schools of education to ensure that prospective teachers are well grounded in specific disciplines and provided a liberal-arts education.

Many novel approaches to revitalizing the liberal arts on campuses have been proposed, among them: learning by doing — including the use of community service, field study, internships, and research projects to integrate experience and application with academic work

The renewal and transformation of the liberal arts, however, remain the key to providing students with a rich and wide-ranging body of knowledge that will equip them to be both problem solvers and communicators and to assess situations and make effective, balanced, and timely judgments — skills that are essential in a knowledge-based, globalizing world.

Within disciplines, of course, teaching should encourage students to draw knowledge together from many sources.

Colleges must develop strategies to enable their faculty members, who are steeped in different disciplines, to have opportunities for multidisciplinary work as they continue their own lifelong learning

Without liberal arts to provide a context for technical training, young people cannot be expected to understand the general nature and structure of our society, the role of the university, or the importance of values.

In particular, higher-education reform must focus on a revival of the liberal arts. Yet, paradoxically, liberal education is in decline just when we need it the most

Unfortunately, many of those student workers say that holding a job hurts their grades, as well as limits their choice of courses. By one estimate, college students typically spend less than half the time on their studies than the faculty expects.

Because many high schools don't do their jobs, 53 percent of college students, including those who attend community colleges, require remedial courses.

Sometimes that vacuum is filled by esoteric ideas, cults, and extremist programs — which are very appealing because they provide answers for absolutely everything.

But while technology allows us to access more information, faster and in a more usable form, we must keep in mind the author and media critic Neil Postman's caution: "The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking."

Of course, the same information technologies that have been the driving force behind the explosion of information and its fragmentation also present us with profoundly integrative tools

Yet the skills of synthesis and systemic thinking are not just luxuries, they are invaluable. Information — of all varieties, all levels of priority, and all without much context — is bombarding us from all directions all the time.

As a society, we tend to pay lip service to the complexity of problems and then continue to gamble on simplistic solutions

he complexity of the world requires us to have a better understanding of the relationships and connections between all fields that intersect and overlap — economics and sociology, law and psychology, business and history, physics and medicine, anthropology and political science

After all, political empowerment and economic opportunity stem from the same root: the spread of knowledge. Thomas Jefferson fervently believed that a nation cannot be ignorant and free; I share this view as well as Jefferson's optimism that societies become more democratic as citizens become more knowledgeable and cultured.

Understanding the nature of knowledge, its unity, its varieties, its limitations, and its uses and abuses is necessary for the success of our democracy.

nstead of helping students learn and grow as individuals, find meaning in their lives, or understand their role in society, college has become a chaotic maze where students try to pick up something useful as they search for the exit: the degree needed to obtain decent employment.