Curricular Infusion Tips | Learning Communities

Curricular Infusion Tips: How Curricular Infusion Can Work in Your Discipline Courses

Read here to learn more about how to leverage the key cognitive structures and content of your own discipline to develop students' skills with developing "college knowledge."

Qualities of Effective Student Success Infusions

Infusion is as much about pedagogy as it is about content.
It's not enough to tell students to see their advisor or study the syllabus (although those are important). Curricular infusions embed support for student development in the fabric of the course.

The most effective infusions will address specific challenges students in your discipline face as they work through your course material.
For example, if math anxiety leads many of your students to want to drop out, develop an infusion that offers math anxiety strategies and supports incremental self-awareness of persistence in the face of difficulty. Build this self-development into course design features such as offering make-ups or pre-quizzes/pre-tests, study groups, etc.

The best infusions will allow for time in class for students to work with and talk about the strategy or tool or activity.
If you create homework assignment sequences, be sure to note how you will reinforce home learning and development during class time.

The best infusions build in reinforcement and recursivity throughout the term.
Whenever possible, plan at least for an early-term, mid-term and late-term engagement with the activity. Develop a working vocabulary that you and your students use to refer to "college knowledge" pieces of their work, and use it throughout the term.

The best infusions build assessment into the design of the infusion.
Be sure to use Classroom Assessment Techniques to measure the effectiveness of your assignments. Make adjustments and share what you learn with faculty in your discipline.

The Best Infusions Leverage the Key Concepts of Your Discipline

The best infusions use the language and cognitive constructs of your discipline to reinforce critical thinking skills as they develop and reinforce time management and self-management.

For many Lane students, becoming familiar with college customs and academic habits of mind can be fraught; for some students, it involves developing new identities and ways of relating. Feeling a sense of belonging in college can sometimes involve feeling out of place at home. But in some form, whether implicitly or explicitly, these skills required for students to succeed in your classes. The best infusions leverage disciplinary thinking to change students' behavior for their students' benefit.

Ideas to explore for Discipline-based Infusion of College Knowledge and Academic Habits of Mind:

SCIENCE Using the Scientific Method—hypothesizing, fact-finding, evaluation of evidence—to develop skills in and deepen understanding of facets of college readiness.
MATH Using graphing skills to create relationships between college readiness and student success and or understanding of college customs and success.
MATH STATISTICS SOCIOLOGY Using principles of prediction and proportions to develop college knowledge.
DIVERSITY/MULTICULTURAL UNDERSTANDING Across disciplines, developing assignments that look at cross-cultural understandings of the interplay between familial or traditional knowledge and the customs and manners assumed in college life.
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Using an investigation of the cultural and historical roots of modern concepts of "college life." Becoming familiar with other cultures' understanding of learning and the contexts in which learning and credentialing occur. Embedding a Lane context into this cultural understanding.
HUMANITIES Help students see the constructs of college customs and manners in their historical, cultural, artistic and aesthetic contexts. How can situating students' present actions within this context improve their own success?
CRITICAL THINKING Developing problem-solving skills of working with competing demands, in competitive environments—when academic habits of mind and ability to persist might operate dynamically.
WRITING Working on activities and assignments that could improve the interplay between writing and the many habits of mind involved in the practice of writing (e.g., planning, proposing, drafting, revising, collaborating). Embed development of more effective group work into your curriculum.
BUSINESS/MANAGEMENT Using discussions of procedures and processes to reinforce students' thinking about college customs, academic habits of mind and "standard operatiing procedures."
ECONOMICS BUSINESS Helping students develop learning strategies that encourage them to transfer what they learn in class to the current economic context.
EDUCATION Using a case-study approach to foster students' ability to teach persistence stragegies.
GRAPHIC DESIGN/MEDIA ARTS/DATA ANALYSIS Using an historical approach to help students understand the development of the discipline over time and the dynamic development of new standards and expectations of behavior within the field.
ART/APPLIED DESIGN Independent creative projects, posters, artworks that intentionally develop multiple learning strategies in students.
ALL FIELDS Active and collaborative projects that highlight and promote understandings of "college knowledge."

Adapting College Success Curriculum

Lane's College Success course utilizes Skip Downing's On Course curriculum, which is a great place to start for teachers wishing to improve students' academic behaviors and "college knowledge." The course textbook, On Course Strategies for Creating Success in College and In Life, is available to faculty; contact Lida Herburger for a copy. There is also a useful website with faculty infusions from colleges across the country: http://bit.ly/qlRk7F

The On Course curriculum is just one resource for developing curricular infusions for your classes. Many pedagogical resources may be available through the discipline contact program in your department.