Students develop the ability to approach a question from multiple perspectives, representing a diversity of ideas and experiences.
- Elaboration of the Outcome
- Student Behaviors that Demonstrate Learning of this Outcome
- Sample Assessment Activities for Observing Student Learning
- Teaching Approaches
Elaboration of the Outcome
What this means
- Students are able to engage with a question posed by someone else or form their own question. This includes:
- Questions with established answers — how a discipline views a topic
- Questions with no known answer (yet) — research pursuits, scholarly inquiries, problems in need of a solution
- Ethical, hypothetical, rhetorical questions where we may never have an answer, but we would want our students to develop a stance
- Students are able to identify more than one way to think about the question.
- Students are able to indicate how multiple, diverse perspectives inform and/or answer the question. These perspectives include:
- Multiple methodologies, theories, tools, audiences, and multiple disciplinary approaches or interdisciplinary approaches
- Lived experiences, viewpoints, and cultural norms
- Perspectives from around the world and not just the U.S. context.
- Students identify implications embedded within the question.
- Students question assumptions embedded within their answers.
Why We Care
In a liberal arts learning environment, we think about issues in the world using tools from various disciplines and valuing differences in experience, positionality, and viewpoint. We want our students to integrate, critically evaluate, and synthesize information from varied sources to address complex issues in a holistic way. We want students to recognize that there are many approaches to problem-solving and to be able to select and apply those tools and methods appropriately. Students should learning from the experiences of others in their community, both local and global, as well as reflecting on their own experiences, and recognize the values that differences can bring to understanding academic, social, political, and other problems. Approaching problems from multiple perspectives can open up new solutions or avenues for exploration, improve the ability to discern the accuracy of information, and enhance collaborative work.
Student Behaviors that Demonstrate Learning of this Outcome
Approach a question from multiple perspectives:
- Identify the characteristics that distinguish perspectives within a topic.
- Listen to opposing views.
- Summarize key arguments.
- Evaluate those arguments.
- Respond appropriately to the opposing views.
- Weigh the merits of each perspective or approach to the question/topic.
- List several ways to achieve the same goal.
- Elaborate on the multiple perspectives by considering how two or more disciplines (or frameworks within a discipline) use the same vocabulary for different concepts, use different vocabularies for similar concepts, or elaborate on how each discipline or framework would approach the research topic.
- Identify more than one way to answer a research question.
- Use multiple methodologies, theories, or tools to answer a research question.
Representing a diversity of ideas and experiences:
- Given a context, students identify when the perspectives come from a more or less diverse set of contributions and can discuss how that diversity (or lack thereof) affects the conclusion or information presented.
- Reflect on and critique one’s own point of view in comparison with other points of view, including prevailing societal perspectives. Factor in systems of discrimination and bias when evaluating views and perspectives.
- Question assumptions inherent within views and perspectives.
- Evaluate the nature of the bias and discrimination that exists within the assumptions within a view or perspective.
- Use tools of the discipline to evaluate the veracity of a claim.
- Recognize when voices from a relevant perspective are missing from a conversation.
- Explain how lived experiences or cultural norms might impact the approach to a research question.
- Engage with perspectives from around the world, not just the U.S. context.
Sample Assessment Activities for Observing Student Learning
- Portfolios
- Literature reviews
- Debates
- Compare and contrast prompts
- Oral histories
- Wiki creation
- Theatrical performances; drafting a scene or dialogue
- Personal reflections
- 3-D modeling
- Story Maps
Teaching Approaches
- Include information about scholars’ backgrounds, geographic location, and/or institution as a way to demonstrate that the field is made up of multiple perspectives.
- Discuss literature reviews presented within scholarly articles — identify what perspectives are present in the literature, what’s missing, what other problems might there be, which kinds of scholars are absent from the discussion.
- Use case studies, mock debates, or other disciplinary appropriate exercises to illustrated different positions in a particular scenario or on a specific question.
- Design assignments that explicitly ask students to compare, contrast, and/or integrate multiple perspectives or disciplinary approaches to create a coherent product.
- Engage students in listening to or reading literature from the discipline that take opposing views on a topic. Ask students to extract the key arguments, to evaluate those arguments, to take a position, and to form their own response while citing multiple viewpoints.
- Engage students in discussions of the context of artistic or creative works, including the implications of contested works and the reception by different audiences.