Integrating inquiry-guided learning across the curriculum: The Top 25 Project at Miami University
✍ Scribed by Beverley A. P. Taylor; Andrea I. Bakker; Marjorie Keeshan Nadler; Cecilia Shore; Beth Dietz-Uhler
- Book ID
- 104601303
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2012
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 57 KB
- Volume
- 2012
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0271-0633
- DOI
- 10.1002/tl.20007
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In 2006, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) launched a major initiative, the Top 25 Project, to embed inquiry-guided learning (IGL) into our largestenrollment courses across the university. These are generally entry-level classes and thus affect many students: 75 percent of incoming students on our main campus in 2010 were in at least one Top 25 class. The initiative began at the highest level of administration and was informed by student intellectual development theory and research. Our president and his collaborators outlined a "student as scholar" model in which educators "help students become more internally focused by validating them as thinkers and burgeoning scholars, presenting thorny problems and topics that lend themselves to multiple legitimate perspectives, introducing them to competencies needed to address those topics, and helping them form, and accept responsibility for, their own decisions and actions" (Hodge, Baxter Magolda, and Haynes, 2009, 19). The Top 25 Project was the fi rst step in infusing this model into the university culture.
Until the Top 25 Project, IGL at Miami (as at many other institutions) was used sporadically in some disciplines, often in senior-level classes, but it was not a widespread approach. To make an impact on student conceptions of learning early in their university experience, we targeted courses that most students take in their fi rst two years. We believed that IGL would This chapter describes the initiative designed to transform the largest enrollment classes at Miami University to focus on inquiry-guided learning and student engagement and discusses the results thus far.