Self Authorship and Reflective Practice in an Innovation Minor

This project describes a minor in Innovation that is being introduced in an engineering department as a part of a new general education curriculum initiative. The minor connects three existing courses from different colleges to form the core course sequence. The theories of selfauthorship1 and reflective practice2 served as guiding principles for an ethnography of each of the classes. These theories are meaningful to students of many disciplines, are relevant to the development of innovators, and have implications for the future design and effectiveness of the minor. Furthermore, the structure of the minor will be situated in a framework of “academic plans in sociocultural context,” as described by Lattuca and Stark3. This framework models the interactions between faculty, learners, instructional resources, assessments and other factors relevant to the “shape of the curriculum” within an educational environment. We chose this framework to situate the findings from an ethnographic study of the three core courses. A protocol that references reflective practice and Baxter Magolda’s Learning Partnerships Model, which is based on self-authorship, was developed for ethnographic classroom observation. The collected data will help us better understand the educational environment and educational processes3, as well as the actors situated within them. In this paper, we offer an analysis of pilot data to better understand how the classes might align with desired outcomes such as student development of self-authorship, reflective practice, and capacity for innovation. Using this analysis, we identify possible implications for (a) adjustment of academic plans, and (b) evaluating and adjusting the educational environment, both described by Lattuca & Stark’s model. Introduction / Purpose Statement General education is a core component of developing well-rounded students4, but it can be challenging to figure out how to make these classes meaningful for students. In recent years, Virginia Tech recognized that many students viewed their general education requirements as a checklist to complete, picking classes that fit in their schedule or were known to be easy. Students did not seem to connect their general education courses with their major or future career, they were just requirements to meet along the way to their goals. To address these challenges, Virginia Tech is implementing a new general education curriculum called Pathways to General Education. In the new format, students will have multiple options, or Pathways, to choose from to fulfill their general education requirements. One of these options is to complete a Pathways Minor: an interdisciplinary minor that covers several general education learning outcomes that is centered around a common theme. The goal of pathways minors is to help students 1) develop their general education skills through classes that are related to and build on each other in an intentional way and 2) reflect meaningfully on how these classes connect to their majors and future careers. This paper will explore the educational environment demonstrated in a three course sequence that makes up the core of a Pathways Minor in Innovation. The Learning Partnerships Model, based on self-authorship theory, will be our primary guide for understanding this environment, and will be used to inform an ethnographic protocol. In addition to using the ethnography results to further develop the minor, we will present the results to contribute to the understanding of innovation as well as curriculum development.