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SNL Advanced Electives

Adapted from Chapter 4 of the School for New Learning's Foundations of Adult Learning Resource Book ms_word_icon'

There are two competences required to fulfill the Advanced Electives. Learning experiences for these competences must be at an advanced level. Transfer courses must be at the 300-400 level, and business courses are not accepted. Other learning experiences must be sufficiently advanced to demonstrate synthesis of complex ideas, understanding of significant research in the field, and originality of perspective. The Research Seminar is a prerequisite for SNL courses or new independent learning in these competences. These competences can fit anywhere in the Arts and Ideas, Human Community, or Scientific World Categories. The assessment criteria below pertain to each competence.

E-1:      Written by student/faculty. (Prerequisite: Research Seminar)
E-2:      Written by student/faculty. (Prerequisite: Research Seminar)

  1. Identifies a phenomenon, problem, or event of personal significance.
  2. Identifies at least 2 approaches to the creation of knowledge that could appropriately be applied to (1).
  3. Evaluates the limitations and possibilities of these approaches to the creation of knowledge.
  4. Articulates a perspective in relation to this phenomenon, problem or event that integrates aspects of these approaches.

In Advanced Elective experiences, students explore the value and practice of being an integrating thinker in today’s increasingly complex world. The competences here draw connections among the categories and disciplines of liberal learning.  Students will demonstrate this competence by considering one phenomenon, problem or event (tears, breast cancer, the bombing of Hiroshima) through the lenses of at least two different approaches to creating and expressing knowledge. They will ask questions such as, what is knowledge? How is knowledge created? What are its sources? How can it be expressed? How is knowledge accorded value or privilege in a particular culture or society?

Students will examine different sources of knowledge, such as inspiration, deductive reasoning, or revelation. They will explore how different sources of knowledge lead to different ways of knowing, and to different forms of expressing knowledge. For instance, an artist’s expression of a phenomenon is a form of knowledge, and so is a scientist’s examination of the same phenomenon.
By choosing two approaches to exploring an event or a phenomenon, students will discuss how different sources and expressions of knowledge are accorded different kinds of value and privilege depending on the cultural context. This will also help students to understand how their own values and assumptions influence the way they experience or understand an event or a phenomenon.

 

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