47 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2017
    1. The different disciplines that the article discusses are ethics, explaining the different ethics or morals within the childhood research.

      Children are so complex and there are so many different aspects to learning about them. So this is definitely spot on.

    2. By collaborating a variety of fields, the researchers have been able to close gaps and gather more information that will lead to future research and development in the field.

      This is why interdisciplinarity is so crucial!

    3. A healthy generation of adults comes from a healthy upbringing

      I feel like some may not understand the value of a good upbringing. Good point.

    1. An airport would be a disaster if there was not an efficient way for all different departments to be able to communicate with each other

      The airport is already is disaster. But she makes a good point, without communication it would be ten times more hectic, which is the case with a lot of situations

    1. your opinion and your thoughts matter, and you need to make those important to you before they are important to anyone else.

      Agreed. You are first priority.

    2. With metacognition, you are able to take your mind out of society’s views and have your own views.

      I relate this to my interdisciplinary experience. It's like you are thinking on your own and not confiding in what other people want you to think or learn.

    3. It is so important to have different ideas that may even seem impossible.

      I agree. Different ideas that are near impossible help you stand out more than the rest.

    1. Interdisciplinary studies allows students to experiment and ask questions. It encourages them to follow their hearts and enjoy their undergraduate experiences. Learning should be exploratory and fun, exactly what interdisciplinary studies is trying to do.

      I wish I was introduced to interdisciplinary studies as a first year. It wasn't until my senior year I became a part of this. I'm happy to be a part of it now but it was definitely a long time coming.

    2. A bachelor’s degree is a great way for students to learn about themselves, how their minds work, and what they want to do after they graduate.

      I still don't even know what I want to do after I graduate.

    3. It teaches students valuable collaborative skills and introduces them to the possibilities of education.

      Preach

    4. An interdisciplinary contribution might not qualify a professor for tenure in any department because his study is not a formal subject attached to a single discipline.

      I think the interdisciplinary department should get MORE funding since it is collaborative

    5. The communication barrier poses a unique challenge to interdisciplinarity: is collaboration possible without a common language?

      We communicate every single day. It's funny to me that communication is a major barrier here.

    6. Knowledge is like a mosaic: every tile represents a scholar who has spent an entire lifetime exploring a single idea.

      I can agree with this.

    1. Interdisciplinary students are actively engaged with their education, involved with every decision that’s made. It’s all on them. Due to the responsibility associated with interdisciplinarity, students must learn how to make concrete decisions, how to effectively combine multiple disciplines into a cohesive major, and how to know what they want. Suddenly, education is relevant again.

      Students should always be involved in the planning of their education. We are paying for it aren't we? so why aren't we always in control? I'm glad that interdisciplinarity is becoming more popularized

    2. “suffer now, succeed later”

      Why should learning and education be suffering?

    3. If students are not engaged with a subject because they believe it’s irrelevant, no amount of force will change their minds, or if they do change their minds, the decision comes from outside, not from within.

      I wish this was a concept that more educators would understand. This is exactly like the gen eds that they require in high school and college...

    4. “Why do I need to learn this? I’ll never use it in real life.”

      This is the best opening sentence ever for an article like this.

    1. “one of the biggest barriers to achieving true interdisciplinary study in education environments is the necessity for collaboration of educators.”

      Luckily, I haven't been faced with this problem yet

    2. By eighteen, most students are excited about life and eager to experience what it has to offer, which is why they should be shown all the options.

      I agree with this. When I was 18 I knew what I wanted to do. I thought college was going to be a place where I could be more independent than i was in high school. Don't get me wrong, I was a lot more independent. But when it came to classes, it was more of "you have to take these required classes to move on to next semester"....why? "Because everyone has to do it". Yeah, that's a good excuse.

    3. graduates need more than one kind of skill if they want to compete in today’s job market.

      And not to mention, compete for the money. Most of the time jobs won't even hire you without a college degree and they pay way more as well.

    4. Many students pursue higher education to learn a specific skill or trade because they have the expectation that there is a need for their skill or trade in society at large.

      Nursing Nursing Nursing

    5. For example, one of his most influential reforms was advocacy for a curriculum based on students’ interests rather than a pre-established curriculum.

      There are a lot of course that are included in my college career as electives. I like that Eliot focused more on what the students themselves were interested in taking. I find myself not being able to learn and pay attention in a class where I feel the information does not resinate with me in any way.

  2. Oct 2017
    1. English teachers would gather together, and the social studies teachers especially without very much deviation from their groups.

      Looking back on my high school experience, i can totally see this.

    1. 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. 

      Couldn't agree more. From past experience of being a nursing student, the program and subject is interdisciplinary. You are consistently taking what you learn from multiple subjects and coming up with solutions in your head. If one was to only focus on the anatomy and the pharmacology, there would be no proper human interaction.

    1. In the early days, students were almost forced into higher education based on societal demands.

      This is definitely making a comback

    2. College began to evolve from an elite privilege for only certain kinds of wealthy or powerful people to an essential career resource that could benefit any student.

      Feels like we are heading towards that route again. Colleges everywhere are just raising the cost to get an education. At this rate, only the wealthy will be able to afford it.

    3. There were no degrees awarded after completion, but it was a way for students to gain extra knowledge and skills.

      We pay so much money to get extra schooling so not having a degree would really upset me. You work 4+ years in school to get that degree. These days you can't get a good job without one.

    4. there is no best method or focus for learning

      Why can't more teachers and universities understand this?

    5. The academy began with teachers simply preaching a topic of their interest.

      I think the funny part about this is that they are preaching about a topic of their interest. There are a lot of instances where students are sitting in a class they aren't even interested in, they are just required to take it.

    1. in this world of specialists, a highly educated person can be unaware of the social and moral dimensions of her actions.

      If we are not thinking before we act, it doesn't matter how educated we are.

    2. The failure to engage wisdom of an adequate breadth for addressing the subject at hand, along with the disciplinary norms that encourage such failure, are painfully evident even in the best of the recent books on the impact of the new reproductive technologies. . . .  [books which] fail to transcend the narrow boundaries of their own argumentative fields to offer broad-based and widely comprehensible options for our collective future.

      there is such a narrow sighted approach to learning. There is "one way" to learn something and that just isn't how everyone learns

    3. Thus, if chance favors the prepared mind, and if preparation often involves grounding in two or more disciplines, then those who wish to speed up the growth of knowledge should promote, or at least tolerate, interdisciplinary knowledge and research.

      This statement to me really challenges the meaning of knowledge. A lot of people think knowledge is how much you know. I think it is more of what exactly you know

    4. No people in our own time could rationally proclaim that they knew everything about everything, or even everything about their own fields . . .  Instead of being challenged by the slowly emerging knowledge of the Renaissance, we are now being deluged by torrents of new information almost daily.

      There are new things constantly being discovered everyday. Even if we think we know everything there is to know about a certain subject...do we?

    1. First, we must help teach the teachers.

      YES

    2. In 1999 74 percent of full-time students worked while attending college, and nearly half of them worked at least 25 hours a week.

      Compare that to now...working 10 hours a week on top of a full course load is stress on top of stress

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

      This is sad to me

    4. And when people do not know how to question deeply, to separate fact from fiction, and to give coherence and meaning to life, they can feel a deeply unsettling emptiness in their lives. Sometimes that vacuum is filled by esoteric ideas, cults, and extremist programs

      Do we know ourselves if we never question deeply? I feel like the best way to get to know your true self is to ask questions, and not little questions. Ask yourself questions like what is the meaning of your own life? Who controls it?

    5. Colleges are becoming academic superstores, vast collections of courses, stacked up like sinks and lumber for do-it-yourselfers to try to assemble on their own into a meaningful whole.

      Really accurate. If you have a good advisor, you are lucky and they help you with deciding classes and what is best for you. College isn't about the learning, it is about passing the class to get the degree

    6. But a major failure of our higher-education system is that it has largely come to serve as a job-readiness program. Instead 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.

      Couldn't agree more with this. In the program I was previously in, it was all about doing what you could to pass the class and prepare for exactly what the job wanted you to do. It was never about building yourself.

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

      all the time....

    2. 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?

      Half the time I feel like I am posting about things that I don't even have interest in with my classes. The teachers assign something, and its not like other people read it. You present it once, and then no one ever looks at it again.

    3. they are the subjects of their learning, not the objects of education technology software.

      I wish more people recognized this

    1. Many students simply want to know what their professors want and how to give that to them.

      This relates to how I feel in almost all of my classes ever taken. You read the syllabus and get the work done to pass the class.

    2. Students would frame, curate, share, and direct their own “engagement streams” throughout the learning environment.4

      I love that the student has the power in this idea. We dictate our own lives.

    3. As part of the first-year orientation, each student would pick a domain name. Over the course of the first year, in a set of lab seminars facilitated by instructional technologists, librarians, and faculty advisors from across the curriculum, students would build out their digital presences in an environment made of the medium of the web itself.

      This is such a smart idea. I wish that my school had something like this during freshman orientation. After four years of school, I would have loved to have my own domain to continue to add my work too.

    4. Environments are not passive wrappings but active processes.

      Agreed. Your environment around you is constantly changing. I believe that it's all a part of the process

    1. 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.

      This is SO important. One of the best points made in this article. Many people continue their education and want to carry the things that they have learned with them. This is the best way to keep all of your hard work.