Dimensions of Learning and Critical Inquiry: The Critical Learning Seminar

CPCS faculty designed the Critical Learning Seminar Program (CLS) to serve as a student's introduction to the College curriculum. As such, a Critical Learning Seminar is the College's only course in which students are required to enroll. Seminars offer opportunity to demonstrate a pair of competencies, Dimensions of Learning and Critical Inquiry.

 

The Dimensions of Learning competency serves two primary purposes. It supports students' awareness of how their experience as a learner has been shaped by personal, social, cultural, and historical influences. This helps them understand how best to build on past learning experience and use the various options of the CPCS curriculum to their full advantage. It also enables them, especially through the seminars' discussion-centered focus, to recognize both the wealth of experience that people bring to CPCS and the importance of learning with and from each other.

 

Dimensions of Learning also supports further development of the students' writing skills. A significant amount of writing is assigned, and, based on feedback from instructors and, sometimes, from peers as well, a significant amount of rewriting is also assigned. Weekly writing workshops are available for CLS students with particular writing issues, as are trained writing tutors. Additionally, a peer tutor is assigned to each seminar to help students with a variety of learning issues, including development of writing skills.

 

The Critical Inquiry competency emphasizes the process of academic research. Each seminar instructor selects a particular focus. Gender identity, workers' rights, popular culture, the war on drugs -- focus shifts from semester to semester, depending on instructors' interests. Students read about and discuss the general topic, and they select a specific issue related to the seminar's focus to research and critically analyze, using both an academic library and the Internet. This process culminates with a formal research paper.

 

The Critical Learning Seminar also works as a sort of collegiate "home room." The seminar's instructor serves as the students' first-semester academic advisor. Its Peer Tutor provides students with ground-level general advising about the College. The various seminars come together at various points to gain understanding of things like competency-based education, the CPCS Learning Plan, its majors and concentrations, and the registration system. The classroom provides opportunity for students to ask particular questions about the experimental, cutting-edge dimensions of the CPCS educational process. The classroom also provides opportunity for instructors and peer tutors both to introduce students to the College's culture and to explain the pedagogical and political underpinnings of that culture.