AAC&U Conference: Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities

Association of American Colleges & Universities
Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities

Network for Academic Renewal Conference
October 22-24, 2009
Atlanta, Georgia
Conference website and registration information: http://www.aacu.org/meetings/integrative_learning/index.cfm

Integrative Learning: Addressing the Complexities will focus on four major themes:

1. Purposes. What are the hallmarks of integrative learning? What are the aims and purposes of integrative learning programs? How can integrating and applying their learning help students move past fragmentation and develop a sense of motivation and purpose in the world?
2. Designs. What kinds of curricular, co-curricular, community-based, and pedagogical designs help to foster integrative learning?
3. Reality Check. What kinds of institutional supports and incentives facilitate more integrative learning opportunities?
4. Assessment. How are campuses documenting and deepening students’ integrative learning through assessment?

Saturday Plenary, October 24, 2009

Supporting Integrative and Lifelong Learning through Authentic Assessment, Teaching, and E-portfolio Development

AAC&U’s VALUE project (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) seeks to contribute to the national dialogue on assessment of student learning. It builds on a philosophy of learning assessment that privileges multiple expert judgments of the quality of student work. Three members of leadership campuses from the VALUE project will discuss interpretations of integrative learning and examine broad issues that are likely to emerge when faculty and their institutions begin to take up the teaching, learning, and assessment of integrative learning.

Marcia Mentkowsi, Professor of Psychology and Director, Educational Research and Evaluation, Alverno College; Melissa Peet, Research Associate, University of Michigan; and Julia Williams, Professor of English and Executive Director, Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology