"Habits of Mind": Ensuring Student Success in General Education Courses
Start Date
8-17-2022 12:00 AM
Description
General education courses present numerous challenges and opportunities for instructors. In the past, college professors have largely focused on content transmission, oftentimes at the expense of teaching transferable skills that prepare first-generation and non-traditional students to navigate the "hidden curriculum" of university-level academic work. Over the past academic year, Dr. Gossard and Dr. Babits created a series of "Habits of Mind" assignments in their high-enrollment general education history survey courses (HIST 1110 and HIST 1700) to provide hundreds of USU students the opportunity to develop important study skills. These habits of mind assignments have emphasized such skills as effective note taking, improving one's time management, and annotating complex texts. Other habits of mind activities, many of which take under 30 minutes for students to complete, also focus on the important ”yet overlooked” skills of self-regulated learning. In their introductory courses, for instance, Gossard and Babits teach students to develop a growth mindset. This workshop will provide an overview of the habits of mind assignments that Gossard implemented in HIST 1110 and Babits used in HIST 1700. Participants will leave the workshop with some concrete ideas to implement into their courses. Importantly, as a workshop, participants, along with Gossard and Babits, will brainstorm ways to customize habits of mind assignments for the needs of different disciplinary ways of thinking.
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"Habits of Mind": Ensuring Student Success in General Education Courses
General education courses present numerous challenges and opportunities for instructors. In the past, college professors have largely focused on content transmission, oftentimes at the expense of teaching transferable skills that prepare first-generation and non-traditional students to navigate the "hidden curriculum" of university-level academic work. Over the past academic year, Dr. Gossard and Dr. Babits created a series of "Habits of Mind" assignments in their high-enrollment general education history survey courses (HIST 1110 and HIST 1700) to provide hundreds of USU students the opportunity to develop important study skills. These habits of mind assignments have emphasized such skills as effective note taking, improving one's time management, and annotating complex texts. Other habits of mind activities, many of which take under 30 minutes for students to complete, also focus on the important ”yet overlooked” skills of self-regulated learning. In their introductory courses, for instance, Gossard and Babits teach students to develop a growth mindset. This workshop will provide an overview of the habits of mind assignments that Gossard implemented in HIST 1110 and Babits used in HIST 1700. Participants will leave the workshop with some concrete ideas to implement into their courses. Importantly, as a workshop, participants, along with Gossard and Babits, will brainstorm ways to customize habits of mind assignments for the needs of different disciplinary ways of thinking.