Indiana University East offers a major in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (with concentrations in Psychology, Sociology, and Political Science). We recently (Fall 1996) developed a gateway course Introduction to the Behavioral and Social Sciences. While the Behavioral and Social Science faculty collectively agreed upon the course goals and objectives, implementation was left up to the two instructors, a Sociologist and an Experimental Psychologist.

We offer an account of the personal and professional benefits and challenges of co-teaching a cross-disciplinary course and provide a successful model for a cross disciplinary course. We include: explicit and implicit goals and objectives of the course, course assignments and activities, assessment strategies, and evaluation.

Indiana University East offers a major in Behavioral and Social with a concentration in Psychology, Sociology, or Political Science. Eight years ago we developed a required "capstone" course, Senior Seminar, to integrate the various disciplines of the major with the concentration chosen by the student. To complete this seminar and their BSS degree, students must show both mastery in their concentration and understanding of the symbiotic relationship between the behavioral and social sciences in general and their specific area of study

Recently, we developed a "gateway" course, Introduction to the Behavioral and Social Sciences. We developed this course in response to three concerns. 1) Students' limited understanding of the content of academic disciplines and reluctance to take courses when they lacked familiarity with the discipline or the individual instructor. 2) Student' difficulty with Introductory Psychology, Sociology and Political Science due, in part, to inadequate writing and thinking skills and 3) The need to attract students to the Behavioral and Social Science program.

Our primary goal for the course was to introduce students to the concept of the social sciences as a group of disciplines that share a common theme -- the understanding of human behavior based on systematic study. We wanted students to understand the similarities and differences between, as well as the methodologies and issues particular to these disciplines.

Secondary objectives were: 1) Assisting the Behavioral and Social Sciences majors to develop an awareness of the larger context of the social sciences in which their specific concentration is located. 2) Assisting non-majors in selecting courses for further study or a minor. 3) Attracting beginning students who were unprepared to choose between the introductory courses offered in the specific disciplines.

We developed the Behavioral and Social Sciences degree and the Introduction to the Behavioral and Social Sciences course in the context of our particular campus and academic division. Indiana University East is a regional campus in east-central Indiana. To meet the needs of our students and to fulfill our mission of providing undergraduate education, the campus is committed to retaining and graduating students who have achieved the following learning objectives.

1. An educated person should be exposed to a broad variety of academic fields traditionally known as the liberal arts.

2. An educated person should have achieved depth in some field of knowledge.

3. An educated person should be able to express him/her self clearly, completely, and accurately.

4. An educated person should be able to relate computational skills to all fields so that he or she is able to think with numbers.

5. An educated person should be able to identify problems and find efficient solutions to those problems in all areas of life.

6. An educated person should be develop the skills to understand, accept, and relate to people of different backgrounds and beliefs.

7. An educated person should be expected to have some understanding of and experience in thinking about moral and ethical problems.

8. An educated person should have the conceptual ability: i.e. the ability to think rationally, to develop informed opinions, and to comprehend new ideas.

We are currently implementing assessment strategies to demonstrate this achievement.

Our current students are very heterogeneous in terms of age, ability and experience. All are commuters, primarily from small towns in the area. About half of our students are non-traditional; 70% are women and many are employed on or off campus. They tend to be working or lower middle class, the first in their family to attend a university, and white; we only have a small percentage of minority students (about 7%.)

Many of our students are returning to school after an absence from a semester to ten years or more. While they may have taken first year courses, many interpret past failures to mean that they are not cut out for higher education. Others are uncertain that they possess the skills required of a college student.

The Behavioral and Social Sciences division discussed several proposals for the form and content of the Introduction to the Behavioral and Social Sciences course. Ultimately the faculty agreed that:

1. The course would be co-taught by faculty within the disciplines which are currently represented in the concentrations.

2. The obligation of coordinating the course would be rotated within the division.

3. The course would incorporate presentations by division faculty detailing their own research or the scope of their particular discipline.

4. The focus of the course would be on integrating student life experience with the theoretical and methodological approach of the social sciences.

We envisioned this course as tool for the development of skills and attitudes that would be useful to the students as they continued their education. We made the assumption that students would bring a variety of experiences to the course and that the course would emphasize the integration of personal experience with the theoretical approach of the social sciences. We believed that this approach would work well in an environment such as Indiana University East.

The division chose four general themes for the course: Critical thinking, diversity, ethics, and a cross disciplinary perspective.

Rather than trying to find a book or article that described the Behavioral and Social Sciences, we searched for texts that were brief, relatively easy to read without extensive new vocabulary, and which discussed issues likely to be of interest to the students. We also included one professional article and a video of a popular movie as resources. We sought materials within the expertise and professional interest of the instructors teaching the course, a Sociologist and an Experimental Psychologist.

Donald Norman's book, The Design of Everyday Things, (1988) uses photos, drawings and many examples to make the reader aware of the human behavior problems that "bad" design of objects and environments can create. It sensitizes students to the effect that their world has on their behavior. Students began to pay more attention to their world and to question everyday actions and activities.

This attention to the world helped to prepare them for the discussion presented by George Ritzer in The McDonaldization of Society. (1996). Ritzer builds on Weber's analysis of the process or rationalization in modern societies. For Ritzer, the organization and values in McDonalds' restaurants exemplify whole sectors of contemporary society. While students found Norman's book somewhat reassuring, the Ritzer book created more anxiety. The sense of being controlled by a system is a familiar part of everyday life and was seen as threatening by many of the students. This heightened awareness provided us with an opportunity to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills as we continually questioned the assumptions made by the students and encouraged discussion of the issues in the classroom.

We wanted the students to have an initial exposure to the professional literature without burdening them with difficult or extensive reading. In Trousers: Feminism in nineteenth century America, Kate Luck (1996) offered an account of efforts to reform women's clothing at the beginning of the "first wave" of feminism in the nineteenth century. The links between clothing styles, the status of women, and social change movements described by Luck became an excellent introduction to a series of discussions on gender. We were able to include work on biology, psychology, and sociology of sex and gender roles as well as encourage students to explore their own views of changing roles of women and men. The social constructions of our assumptions about gender were further challenged when we viewed segments of "The Birdcage" during class.

We prepared a rough syllabus for the first class session. We developed the daily schedule of discussions and presentations as the semester progressed and division faculty committed themselves to presentation dates and topics. The syllabus included basic course and instructor information as well as an indication of grading criteria. We based grades for the course on: 1) In class written comments, 2) Weekly Reaction Papers, 3) Formal Papers in Response to the texts and 4) Midterm and Final Exams.

It was our intention to encourage critical thinking through directed writing assignments. The assignments provided students with frequent feedback on their performance in the course. We were not willing to take on monumental grading responsibilities and we did not want the course to be perceived as a burden by the students. In response to these concerns, we chose to require many small writing assignments rather than a major paper.

The in-class reaction papers asked students to respond to a general question that related to the day's discussion, such as "What one issue or idea discussed in class was most meaningful? Why?" We both read and commented on the daily papers and graded them as unacceptable, acceptable, and excellent. Other presenting faculty had the opportunity to read the papers and comment if he or she wished. Since these papers were worth two points, we rewarded students for attendance, for responding to the question thoughtfully, and for offering us feedback about the progress of the class.

Longer, more formal, weekly papers focused on reading assignments and in class presentations and discussions. We graded these papers on a ten point scale with specific criteria for each assignment. When we were scheduled to discuss the first section of Norman's book, we asked students to turn in a two or three page typed paper that responded to the question, "As you read through Norman's book, a great deal of what he has to say seems to be common sense. What is common sense (Your definition?) Why don't people use this common sense in some situations?" When we were ready to discuss the final section of Ritzer, students were asked to write on "Why does Ritzer believe that increasing rationalization (McDonaldization) is ultimately irrational? Do you believe the 'cage' is made of velvet, rubber, or iron? Explain. Must/can/should we resist the process of rationalization? How?"

Other weekly papers were developed to allow students to respond to faculty presentations. After a lecture by a political scientist on patterns of immigration and discrimination in the U.S., students were asked to write a two to three page essay on the question "To what extent is America today still a society of 'natives' and 'strangers?' Who are the natives and strangers? Can the relationship be changed? Should it?" These papers often lead to interesting class discussions. After a presentation by an anthropologist, we asked the students to examine the contents of a trash-can at home and to write an essay drawing conclusions based entirely on this "archeological" information.

The midterm and final exams were also essays. We gave the students a list of eight possible questions a week before the test day. We chose five of these questions and assigned them on the exam day. The students had the hour and fifteen minute class period to write their essays. We chose this approach because we wanted the students to be able to prepare and respond thoughtfully and to avoid the pressure of trying to guess what would be on the exam. We encouraged students to form study groups outside of class. The exam included information from faculty presentations and in-class discussions as well as material from their reading. One such midterm question was "Expand on our discussion of 'cups.' How is a cup a representation of the culture that produced it? Use Tolley and Shapiro presentations and your own thoughts and experiences in your answer." On the final exam, we asked the students to respond to the following: "Joe Blake's lecture and the Red/Green exercise were concerned with group solidarity and communication. Discuss the sequence of the development of solidarity in soldiers in Viet Nam and the development of solidarity in the Red/Green exercise and during class this semester. What are the similarities and differences?"

We both read all written work independently and assigned grades jointly. While this was more time consuming in some ways, the discussion of grading when there was disagreement probably resulted in a fairer and more objective grade for the student. It was an interesting exercise for both of the faculty involved. This process forced us not only to agree on criteria for evaluation but to defend our interpretation of student performance. Sometimes this was challenging, but real disagreement was rare.

Overall, we graded students on the basis of accumulated assignment and exam points, with 90% out of a possible total of 300 points equaling an A. With the points from in-class papers, it was possible for a "perfect" student to earn 320 points (though none did.) Since all of our students are commuters and most have family and work obligations and since we saw no way to have students make up classes missed, we deliberately included the 20 "extra" points to allow for an occasional absence that would have lowered scores from reaction papers. We did not want the emphasis on in-class work to deny the students the possibility of achievement.

We addressed the themes of the course in the presentations, class discussions and activities and in the assignments. For example:

We defined critical thinking to include analysis of information, creativity, problem solving, and awareness of multiple perspectives. Students were given a list of characteristics of critical thinkers which stated that a critical thinker is able to: Be flexible, identify inherent biases and assumptions, maintain an air of skepticism, separate opinion form facts, avoid over-simplification, use logical inference processes, and examine available evidence before drawing conclusions.

Two of the psychology faculty put on a demonstration of "mind reading". They encouraged the students to try to figure out how the "trick" was performed by instituting various controls over the environment. While the students never did figure out how the trick was done, they participated in a process of hypothesis generation and testing.

We included Mind Maps (Buzan & Buzan, 1993) to encourage divergent and creative thinking and to assist the students in identifying their own biases. Mind Mapping is a diagrammatic form of outline or concept map that graphically portrays the relationship between concepts or knowledge. We introduced mind mapping with an exercise on defining a "Human Being." The individual maps created were combined into a map for the class as a whole. Students were able to identify gaps and biases in their own thinking as well as identifying many of the concepts addressed in the Behavioral and Social Sciences. This exercise gave the students a powerful thinking tool while introducing the breadth of the discipline. A similar exercise was used at the end of the semester to assess student learning. The structure of the course and many of the themes were visible in these final mind maps.

The value of these techniques is supported by a student's comments from the final exam. "Creativity has been the most meaningful idea to me this semester ....What has been most helpful in the creative area for me has been the mind mapping exercises. This has provided a great release in creative energy to kind of check in with feelings, concepts, ideas, thought patterns, etc. ..." P.T.

Our students come from a relatively homogenous environment. It is often difficult for them to take another's point of view or to see the value of someone else's opinion. Providing them with information about differences is not enough. They must also learn to value things outside of their own experience.

We introduced students to the idea of diversity from the point of view of the relationship between the person who designs an object and the person who uses it.. Norman's The Design of Everyday Things,(1988) points out instances where someone has created an object or an environment that "should" be usable, but often is not. He describes doors that cannot be opened, appliances that cannot be turned on, and tools that cannot be used, even though the person who designed them saw them as appropriate. Students were relieved to hear that there were others who could not figure out which knob to use to turn on a burner, or how to program the VCR. Understanding how and why people differ makes being different more acceptable.

A presentation by the Political Science faculty member on "Natives and Strangers" gave a taste of the topics and method of political science as well as a first person point of view on being different from those around you. His experiences in the civil rights movement made a powerful impression. The discussions of dress reform, gender and changing roles for men and women also added to the individual student's sense of what it means to be different. Throughout the semester, students made continual reference to the need to take another's point of view into account or to make something accessible to more people.

Moral and ethical issues appeared at several points during the course. A faculty presentation on Medal of Honor winners explored the social factors linked with a willingness to give one's life for one's fellow soldiers. A lively class discussion followed in which students pondered when and why self-sacrifice might be seen either as a choice or a duty.

A social work faculty member divided the class into groups to respond to a series of human dilemmas likely to confront a practicing social worker. Students were asked to counsel or intervene with the imaginary "clients" in terms of the basic principles of social work. This proved especially difficult for students who experienced conflict between their own values and beliefs and the choices being made by their clients. We also introduced students to the American Psychological Association's code of ethics for research and the Indiana University East code of ethics for students. Many were surprised to find out that such formal codes existed. One writing assignment asked students to describe their own ethical code.

While many of the discussions and exercises pointed out differences and similarities between the disciplines, other activities encouraged students to use multiple disciplines to enhance their understanding.

One exercise which encouraged students to use the critical thinking and observation skills that we were trying to develop as well as see the differences in goals of the different disciplines, was an exercise in looking at an object and making observations about its physical and social function based on its structure and appearance. This was first introduced as an anthropological technique where artifacts are used to generate hypotheses about the lives of people who no longer exist. The anthropology professor brought in two "mugs" and discussed the possible uses, including the potential that one was a "night water" container.

We devoted the next class period to an exploration of observation methodologies. The instructors brought in a "mug" or container for each student. The students then described these as objectively as possible, hypothesizing on potential uses and social meaning. A follow-up question on an exam asked the students to take the perspective of the two authors, Norman and Ritzer, in describing a simple bowl shaped object that was illustrated on the exam.

Another example of cross-disciplinary understanding was serendipitous. In the discussion of the discipline of psychology, the psychologist presented the various perspectives in the discipline in terms of a discussion the effects of biology, early experience, learning, social consequences, and other factors on the behavior and cognition's of a depressed individual. At the end of the description, the sociologist responsible for the course asked for a moment to interject the sociological perspective using the same example. The interaction between a psychologist and a sociologist gave the students a sense of the consequences of different theoretical points of view as they talked about the consequences if the problem of depression was interpreted as an individual or socially based phenomena.

In addition to fulfilling the stated learning objectives of the course, we had several personal goals. We wanted our students to enjoy the social sciences as much as we do. We wanted their first academic experience with the discipline to be interesting and fun.

We also wanted them to meet our colleagues as faculty and as scholars. Many of the faculty have extensive experience outside of the classroom. Some faculty had the opportunity to present their research and professional experiences. For example: One of the sociology faculty presented a portion of his research on medal of honor winners. A colleague in Criminal Justice is a lawyer and talked to the students about his career in the FBI. The anthropologist does extensive field work (including an on campus "dig" and a yearly field trip to Wyoming) and included references to this in his presentation.

Student perceptions of the course were assessed with a divisional evaluation at the end of the semester. At least 10 of the 17 students who filled out an evaluation reported significant progress toward meeting those campus learning objectives that were appropriate for this type of course. A five point Likert scale was used to collect students' perceptions about the course. Most students selected the most positive rating for the items on the scale. For example: Of the seventeen students reporting, 16 (94%) were enthusiastic about the course, 14(82%) reported considerable stimulation of thinking in the area, and 12 (71%) gave the course an overall rating of Excellent.

The only areas with neutral ratings had to do with the basic organization of the course. The student comments reflected this minor concern that seems to be based on the lack of a daily set schedule at the beginning of the semester.

Even more telling were the student comments. Many students found the reaction papers presenting ended questions useful. "...(T)he papers have just been a jungle gym for the mind. We are given the topic and what we do with it and how we present it is unique..." P.T.

Nearly all of the students stated that they enjoyed the faculty presentations. "Having guest speakers was fantastic! Maybe some or all could be invited back for a feedback session." wrote one student. Several students said that the speakers and the format of the course made it "more difficult for many of us to choose which we would be more interested in for a degree."

We began the course with an awareness that whatever we did with the course would create expectations about future classes from the point of administrators, other faculty and the students. We wanted to create a course that was academically and administratively defensible, while being a positive experience for students so that the course would be filled in future semesters.

As we worked our way through the semester, we were pleased at the progress that students were making and the interest that the course held for the students. It seemed to be going much as we had intended.

We were also distressed at the competence level of many of the students. Students often turned in critical thinking exercises with little evidence of thought or analysis. Some students had great difficulty moving from the concrete examples in the texts to either application to personal life experience or to theoretical questions. It was difficult for them to make the leap between McDonaldization as a way to run a fast food business to the theoretical concept proposed by Ritzer. This fact reinforced the need for an introductory level course that strengthens these skills, before other courses are taken in the discipline.

A far as the faculty involved were concerned, the course was FUN! We enjoyed each other's company and the stimulating discussions that we got into, both in and out of class. While our original intention was to be able to have one person in class at a time, in practice, this happened only occasionally when one of us had another obligation. The presentations by other faculty gave us new insight into our colleagues and their disciplines. The interaction between two individuals with different training and perspectives made every class richer and more vibrant. It was easy to keep energy in the class, knowing that a colleague was listening intently and critically.

Grading assignments and exams in tandem was one of the benefits of the class. While it did not lessen the grading load, it improved the quality and fairness of the grading process and gave us a new picture into another discipline.

The process of developing the structure of a divisional course with colleagues and then making the course happen through collaboration both in and out of the classroom was a powerful experience. We believe that we have demonstrated that faculty in diverse disciplines can find common ground and can support each other effectively in a cross-disciplinary gateway course. We also discovered that two instructors from different areas can offer the students (and themselves) a valuable experience in understanding and respecting differences as a method of understanding self and society. The two of us attempted to model, in our grading and class work, the concepts of similarity and difference that is basic to the behavioral and social sciences.

Buzan, T. & Buzan, B. (1993). The mind map book: How to use radiant thinking to maximize your brain's untapped potential. NY, NY: Dutton.

Luck, K. (1996). Trousers, feminism in nineteenth century America. In Kirkham, P. The Gendered Object. NY, NY: Manchester University Press, pp. 141-152.

Nichols, M. (Director) (1996). The Birdcage (Videotape)

Norman, Donald (1988). The Design of Everyday Things, NY, NY: Doubleday.

Ritzer, George (1996) The McDonaldization of Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.