Big Ideas (BI) Courses are general education courses centered on themes rather than individual disciplines. These courses are team-taught across an array of disciplines, departments, and even colleges. The current set of courses are taught as active-learning, team-based, peer-learning courses in active-learning (TILE) classrooms.
The impact of these interdisciplinary, team-taught, active-learning courses include:
- Students work closely with several experts in a variety of fields.
- Faculty identify and overcome disciplinary “bottlenecks,” aspects of a discipline that are particularly difficult for novices.
- Students develop an intrinsic interest in new fields and seek out additional courses in disciplines they first encountered in a Big Ideas course.
- Faculty members share teaching strategies and assessments through peer mentoring.