Association of General & Liberal Studies - September 2014 - Atlanta

Primary reason for attending this year was to do a pre-conference workshop with Jeanne Horst (CARS) and Gretchen Hazard (GenEd) - Coming to Terms with you Assessment Disorder/s.  We did three hours of the assessment/learning cycle with 15 participants.  We tried to live the learning cycle by creating workshop outcomes, having some prescribed interventions, and then assessed our results with our participants via Qualtrics Survey.  Quick analysis of survey results have given us some areas to revisit for improvement as well as noting some of the areas of strength.  Follow up readings were provided for those needing more information.  I am happy to share the slides or worksheets if interested.

Other sessions I attended included;

1:  Creating a state GEM.  I attended a similar session to this one last year, just switch North Dakota to Idaho.  Idaho schools are coming with ways to creating more transferability of general education course work between institutions.  Multiple institutions came together to designate what constitutes a GEM (General Education Matriculation) course.  If a course is GEM "stamped" by one institution in the group, it is considered to be appropriate for transfer credit to another institution.  Representatives from five institutions discussed their path to this certification process and how it appears to be working out at each of their schools.

2:  Success in Integrating Learning within and beyond the classroom.  Learned two useful acronyms, WIC (within the classroom) and BIC (beyond the classroom).  Faculty from the University of South Carolina discussed their Quality Enhancement Plan.  They have created a model that extends learning outside the classroom, codifies it, and gives the student incentive to do some additional work.  Their USC Connect program seeks to extend learning and leadership opportunities to students.  Students who complete these additional experiential requirements achieve a degree with GLD or graduation with leadership distinction.  Panelists described the program model, development, implementation, and assessment.

3:  Dualities of Liberal Education Reform:  We don't have all the answers but we have a damn good story.  This session, while interesting, wasn't the good story I was expected, but it was a good story. Faculty from Webster University (St. Louis and GENEVA) describe their international experiences implementing and using the AAC&U Value Rubrics in their Global Citizenship Program.

Plenary and Keynote Speakers included; Terrel Rhodes (AAC&U) and Dr. Linda Halpern who received the AGLS 2013 Joseph Katz Award.

This is a conference where they feed you breakfast and lunch, so you are inside windowless rooms for many hours on end, but we did manage to get over the wall from some real southern comfort food.  Collards, grits and catfish.  Moonshine was also prominently and aggressively offered, caramel moonshine. Really?  Who knew?