Current state of convergence education in liberal education courses in college and measures for improvement -With a focus on the Discipline and Thinking course at Suwon University

Yang, Sooyeon; Yee, Damin

Korean Journal of General Education 2019;13(3):179-210.
Published online June 30, 2019.

Sooyeon Yang, Damin Yee

대학 교양교육으로서의 융합교육의 현황과 개선 방안 연구

양수연, 이다민

Abstract

In recognition of the growing social demands amid a change of generation, this study aims to investigate the current state of liberal education in college for fostering people with creativity and interdisciplinary competence and measures for improvement. More specifically, this study focuses on an interdisciplinary course titled Discipline and Thinking at Suwon University. Suwon University promotes convergent liberal curricula that lower interdisciplinary and interdepartmental barriers with a goal of cultivating abilities to think holistically and creatively. Discipline and Thinking, a liberal arts course, is a required general education (second-year students) course introduced in 2018 at Suwon University. This course was designed to promote interdisciplinary convergence while retaining the features of a general education course. In this course, students explore the properties, issues, and methodology of foundational studies in multiple fields, including humanities, mathematics, engineering, economics, and philosophy. This study attempts to diagnose the current state of convergence education in college liberal education by reviewing the actual lectures of the course Discipline and Thinking in detail. The results confirmed that Discipline and Thinking is a liberal arts course that can overcome major-centered education and have a potential as a convergent liberal arts course that can improve students’ “fundamental study skills” by teaching fundamental methodologies of various disciplines, “holistic and comprehensive reasoning skills” through writing assignments, and“communication skills” through discussions and presentations. Moreover, this study identified measures to improve the lecture by analyzing the lecture evaluations (professor, student), based on which we proposed the direction of convergence education as liberal arts education. In other words, we suggested that convergence education should cultivate students’ abilities to engage in interdisciplinary thinking on their own, as opposed to simply delivering interdisciplinary knowledge and should develop a syllabus that encompasses various disciplines with internal consistency, based on which professors should deliver the educational content in a consistent and balanced manner within the scope of an interdisciplinary course that encompasses various educational contents.

Key Words: STEAM, College liberal education, convergence education, convergence competency, interdisciplinary courses, Discipline and Thinking, STEAM