Is there a corollary in gen ed courses?
Dr. Ewell: I think there is, and I think there has been a lot of progress here that can be attributed to both technology and research that ought to profoundly affect what’s going on in assessing general education. First of all, there has been a real revolution in cognitive science and as a result, we know a lot more about the way people “make meaning” out of educational experiences. That’s affecting the way curricula are designed to include much more collaboration and active learning, much more problem-based learning and service learning. All of those things are just as important in general education as they are in the practice disciplines. They certainly affect assessment in the sense that we now know much more deeply what we’re looking for in terms of the meaning-making process, which leads to more authentic ways of thinking about creating scenario- or case study- based methods that can isolate the many misunderstandings that students may have in trying to grasp a concept in, say, ph
