Checklist for new Integrated Studies faculty

Getting Started with your Team

• Ask yourself what you would be interested in exploring with your colleagues?  What would create new learning for you?
  
• Have long general conversations about the theme and then identify specific "big ideas" skills and concepts for your syllabus.
  
• Think first about an important question(s), theme, topic to explore and what sources (good books, films, etc) to use before you think about what credits to offer.
  
• Expect to spend much more time than you would have imagined with your colleague(s) developing the assignments to support the interdisciplinary theme.
  
• Create a new syllabus that reflects the course’s central theme; don't expect to simply paste together a syllabus from several courses. 

• Discuss how you can help your students discover the connections between the disciplines: "Understand the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge" (IS learning outcome).  
  
• Plan to experience collaborative teaching and learning (teacher-teacher; student teacher; student-student).

• Expect that a 10-credit coordinated studies course will produce enough work for a 15-credit class in terms of grading, reading load, and faculty planning time. (Most faculty teams meet once or twice a week for the duration of the quarter as well as immediately before class.)
  
• Be flexible; plan a weekly schedule but be ready to change and adapt it if the learning community begins to discover a new direction.
  
• Expect to grade papers even if you are not an English faculty.  Since coordinated studies faculty work as a team, you will be expected to participate in the grading of weekly papers (seminar papers, essays, reflection papers, etc.) This can be seen as a "Writing across the curriculum" workshop for non- composition people.
  
• Plan to explain interdisciplinarity in your courses so that students can begin to learn to identify it and understand what it means.
  
• In a linked class, consider formulating a weekly question or a group project that would help students explore the interdisciplinary aspect of the two linked classes.

·        Consider yourself a learner as well as a teacher. Expect to learn from your colleagues’ different areas of knowledge and intellectual interests. This should liberate you from having to be the expert all the time.

·        Build into your schedule a faculty seminar to explore the readings with each other--just for the intellectual joy of it.

• Learn about and appreciate different teaching styles and develop new pedagogical practices/philosophies--be open to new experiences even if you are uncomfortable with them at first.
  
• Don’t be surprised if you fall in love with learning again and appreciate the teacher-as-student experience in a coordinated studies course.
  
• Have new faculty observe a seminar in another class

Look at a sample syllabus

Be Familiar with Student Seminars -- Seminars have been at the heart of North's coordinated studies program since they were first introduced in the 80's.  In 2007, Margot Boyer and Jim Harnish led an effort to create a video entitled "Seminar: A Skill Everyone Can Learn" as a teaching tool for both students and faculty.  This video is available on the SCCtv website: Link to Seminar Video (Click on "Seminar: A Skill Everyone Can Learn" under North programs.)

Read another Instructor's Seminar Packet

Read Jim Harnish's Classic "What's In A Seminar?"

Look at a Sample Seminar Paper

Learn what Students say about Seminars

Use the Heuristic to Create an Integrative Assignment

Look over the Rubric for Assessing Integrative or Interdisciplinary Learning

The Integrated Studies Committee is available to support new IS faculty. 
Please don’t hesitate to contact the coordinator, Jane Lister Reis (jreis@sccd.ctc.edu) if you have any questions or concerns.
(Last modified 8/25/08)