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Integrating 21st Century Skills in Teaching and Learning

On September 23, 2008, Sean Cordes from University Libraries moderated a C.H.A.T. session regarding approaches for teaching 21st century skills to undergraduate students.

Highlights and Points of Discussion

I. 21st Century Skills include...

  • Learning and Innovation Skills.
  • Life and Career Skills.
  • Information, Media & Technology Skills.
  • Core Subjects & 21st Century Themes.

II. Are students ready for the world of work?

  • While basic skills (like writing) are important, applied skills like teamwork and critical thinking are "very important" to employers.
  • Most high school graduates are deficient in the top-ten rated applied skills. This improves some at the two-year college level and only slightly more at the four-year college level.
  • On Bloom's taxonomy of learning, our focus needs to be on the higher levels of the cognitive and psychomotor domains.

III. Literacy Areas for 21st century learners...

  • Visual Literacy
  • Information Literacy
  • Multicultural Literacy
  • Media Literacy
  • Multimodal Literacy

Sean demonstrated how these skills are integrated into a 21st Century Skills course for students in the Honors program. Emphasis in the projects is on application level skills where students have to go through multiple steps and use multiple tools to accomplish a task. Web 2.0 tools such as Flickr, Animoto, and Wordpress are used to help students demonstrate fluency with communication and work processes and to help students "think outside the book."

Handouts and Resources