Research Skills & Interdisciplinary Problem Solving

Hello Everyone. This is Week 4 and we are focusing on Research Skills & Interdisciplinary Problem Solving. We are all constantly learning either by taking classes or by job experiences. In each of these we can try to excel on our own, but lets face it. Planning and research is the key. We need some outlet to get creative and our minds thinking. It’s a skill that teachers have been drilling into us our whole lives because it’s so valuable. We use all sorts of research skills in order to complete work goals and course research assignments.

Answer These and Do This:
• What certain abilities do you find very useful when completing a research project? How can research help you in an employment setting? Also remember to think Interdisciplinary. How might your ability to solve problems from an interdisciplinary perspective be valuable to an employer?

• Create a potential (fictitious but believable) work scenario where your research and problem solving skills as an interdisciplinary thinker might come into play.

Ethics and Critical Thinking

Just an FYI, the group can also address one another not just me:

When I took the critical thinking reasoning virtual philosopher I have to admit that it was difficult to make some of the decisions that I did. With the friend problem I choose to tell my friend the truth by ethical reasoning, with the life boat scenario I choose to throw the 400 pound guy out the boat with critical thinking, and for the liver problem I choose to save the AIDS researcher with critical thinking. All my choices came from my personal ethics and I have to say by doing this assignment I felt like I had to take real responsibility for my choices. Ethical reasoning deals with your beliefs and values and sometimes that interferes with what you need to do. Critical reasoning is more like looking at a problem from all angles and coming up with the best situation not really involving your feelings. Summarizing my scores I was consistent with my choices, half of me was happy to see that but then the other half felt bad because of some of the choices that I had to make in this exercise.

DO THIS….Have fun with this exercise

1. Click the link below which will take you to an interactive exercise called Virtual Philosopher developed by Dr. Wade Maki from the Philosophy department at the University of North Caroline at Greensboro.
Virtual Philosopher Link (must have updated FLASH to play correctly): http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/vicecrime/vp/vp.html
2a. Comment on your critical thinking reasoning that led to your decisions for all three scenarios: the friend's problem, the lifeboat problem, the liver problem.
b. Explain where your critical thinking gave way to your values, ethics, and beliefs? Comment on the differences you perceive between "ethical" and "critical" reasoning and what kinds of problems it caused in doing or reflecting on this exercise and even in your academic experiences.
c. Comment on how the Virtual Philosopher scored your response. From the comments you received about your responses, what insight have you gained about your own critical thinking and reasoning?

Integration

Integration is the process of combining different things together to make it a new whole. A couple of examples of integration is when two companies consolidate together to become one entity like Northwest Airlines and Delta. Also taking racial differences and putting them together in one community. Sometimes we think our areas of concentration & our minors really do not mesh together or integrate with one another, but that is what makes IDS such an innovative concept. You can bring subjects together that you did not think were possible. Our lives are integrated all the time whether it is in a professional, academic, or personal capacity. It is important for our areas/minor to integrate in these three aspects of our lives because it helps shape who we are, how we learn, and eventually what type of job we go for. I feel the way my areas/minor can get integrated better is by at least combining two out of the three subjects if not all of them. My areas are education, Behavioral & Social Science and a minor in History. I plan to be a history professor, and commission as an officer in the air force; I have integrated both of my areas and minor in my aspirations.

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NOW ITS YOUR TURN!!!
What does integration mean to you and why is it important in your life? Is it important to integrate your areas/minor and why? Have you integrated your areas/minor and if so how? Post your comments to these questions and share your thoughts!!!!FYI I will be the only one posting to your comments this week....So lets have fun....

Welcome! Introductions!

Hi CornerStone Students! My name is Elise Robinson and I choose Interdisciplinary Studies BA as my major. My areas of study are Behavioral and Social Sciences, Arts, and a minor in Health Sciences. At first I choose these areas out of convenience but with the help of capstone I was able to combine these disciplines and come up with a career that I am interested in as well as being most prepared in. My outlook on the future is always open for change; however my plan A with my IDS BA is to become a human resource officer for a medical business. I look forward to discussing and blogging with all of work, I hope we all get a lot of this Spring Term.

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Hi Cornerstone students! My name is Stephanie Shafer and I am a senior graduating in May. :D My areas are Health and Behavioral and Social Sciences and my minor is Social Science Education. In explaining IDS to my peers I often describe it as “create your own major”, but have discovered it’s much more than that. It’s creating new knowledge with the research of different disciplines. My favorite part about being an IDS major is the diversity, and the opportunity to take the classes I am really interested in, within the different colleges. I love all things Africa and would like to go there and do some missions work after college, and IDS has given me a vast background of education and I feel I could be helpful over there in a variety of ways. I feel that the biggest disadvantage of IDS is that it still has a way to go in being respected amongst the academic community, because you have more freedom to choose your classes. I’m really looking forward to this semester and getting to know each other.
~Steph~

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Hello ALL, My name is Idilia Gonzalez but you can call me DEE…I am currently in my last semester here at UCF. My areas of study are Education and Behavioral and Social Science, with a minor in history. I am a Senior Airmen in the United States Air Force and putting a package in to commission as an officer. I am from Brooklyn, NY and have been in Orlando for about seven years. I choose IDS because I switched my major a couple of times and had a lot of credits to apply somewhere so IDS was perfect for me. IDS is a newer discipline compare to the traditional majors out there, many have not heard of it and it could be challenging to explain it to someone unfamiliar with it. I really see many advantages of being an IDS major, we get to structure our own education, become a well rounded student and I feel we become the better choice out there to employers. I am looking forward to meeting everyone and helping you in any way I can to get you to your goals.

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Hello Cornerstone students! My name is Mikaela Anderson and I will be assisting in the effort to guide all of you through the rest of this semester. I will be graduating this semester, after four years in college, with my first minor in Business Administration and my second minor in Political Science. I chose to focus my degree on the Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Computational Sciences. Through the understanding that I have gained through Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) has taught me that keeping an open mind and realizing that the world we live in is connected in some way or another. IDS realizes that too much specialization produces a narrow view of the world and limits a person’s experiences and understanding. Also, no one can know everything there is to know not only because there is too much to learn in one lifetime, but also because the pool of information is growing at an exponential rate. Therefore, the best thing for someone to do is to keep an open mind and look for how things interact with and affect each other. By achieving an IDS perspective and knowledge base, a person can achieve new heights and open doors that haven’t even been explored yet. Within my course of education I have realized that business practices and principles are a part of every career and as such are vital to be familiar with and understand. And further, all businesses are affected by the changing conditions of the world in which they exist and therefore it is valuable to understand the underlying ideas behind political science. Of course however, the growing proliferation of technology in today’s world which is a part of nearly every aspect of life cannot be ignored and as such warrants study and the acquirement of knowledge.

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NOW ITS YOUR TURN!!

Go ahead and write a brief post and let us know who you are. What are your interests? What your major is and what you'd like to do with it, as well as something interesting or different about yourself. Any Questions or Concerns feel free to post those as well. Just click "comment" on this post and paste it into the text box. --THE GEMS