Making Scholarly Activity Available to the Masses: The Scaffolding of Scholarship Throughout the Undergraduate Curriculum

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focuses on improving student critical thinking, information literacy, and written communication. Rather than developing these skills through traditional methods (e.g., through senior-level, independent research), these learning outcomes are practiced through scholarly experiences. Traditional undergraduate scholarship manifests itself through terminal, senior capstone or research experiences. These, because of the economy of scale, typically reach a minority of students, often just honors students or those approached by faculty mentors. At FGCU, however, scholarly experiences are a part of the curriculum throughout the program of study, and scaffolded to build greater depth and sophistication. Presented here are examples from both a program in STEM (Marine Science) and the humanities (Music Performance). Students in Marine Science receive their first exposure to the vetting of literature and expository scientific writing within their general education science courses. Students are presented with an exercise to evaluate the credibility of web-based literature using the CRAAP test. A semester-long writing assignment has them investigate an earth-process-related problem that has societal consequences. They review and evaluate the secondary literature, prepare a first draft that is critiqued, and then submit a final version while meeting a number of milestones along the way. Students enter the major’s curriculum through a course entitled “Scientific Process”, which introduces them to all aspects of scientific research and culminates with them writing and defending a research proposal they may eventually work to completion. Numerous courses at the upper-class level are designed as scholarly focused or enriched, a branding requiring that certain criteria are met. In these courses, students often participate in genuine collaborative research projects that can lead to student publication and enhance faculty productivity. Finally, as a senior, the capstone course requires that they produce a scholarly poster or oral presentation that is either given in the class or within a university forum. Music Performance students’ experiences track towards demonstration of content mastery in the artifact of a senior recital. In this public display of scholarly achievement a student presents repertoire from major historical eras on his or her instrument or voice for an hour or more. Additionally the students complete a comprehensive document analyzing music in terms of performance practice (how and why certain music should be performed to meet historically appropriate creations and recreations). Students enter this major their freshman year after an audition process and immediately begin developing the skills required to demonstrate proficiency as professional musicians. Experiences performing in ensembles and in private lessons cultivate listening skills to make informed musical judgments. Theory courses develop students’ abilities to hear music with their eyes. Upper level courses require students to clearly articulate in writing their thoughts about music’s formal properties, why certain music requires particular performance considerations, and how to execute those performance requirements in their technique. The conundrum for collection of data is how to assess university-wide learning outcomes in the context of a performance. Without a tangible artifact, FGCU relies on artist teams to develop assessment procedures that accurately capture if students meet targets as demonstrated in performance. Though too early for us to have extensive assessment data, anecdotal evidence suggests students enjoy this approach and are honing their skills within these learning outcomes. We anticipate these improvements will increase graduates’ life-long learning potential, as well as their competitiveness for employment and further education