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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

Educational systems are serving students best if they enable and encourage students to build their own interdisciplinary pathway. This approach is sure to foster a love of learning, ignite a spark of enthusiasm and address learning differences for students.

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.

According to Grunewald colleges must be redesigned as completely interdisciplinary. I couldn’t even imagine my excitement if I attended a school with zero majors.

Interdisciplinary Studies also greatly fosters the ideals of metacogniton. Metacognition is the, “awareness of your own learning and thinking process(57, Repko)”.

I am creating and envisioning a possibility that others may not see or may not have the confidence to direct.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Gaining ownership over the data is vital—but until students see this domain as a space that rewards rigor and experimentation, it will not promote student agency.

This can be a way to track growth and demonstrate new learning over the course of a student’s school career

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

the 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.

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.