LAS Courses at the Adult and Online Campuses

LAS 20010 College Seminar I: Exploring the Liberal Arts

The first of two foundational LAS courses introduces the breadth areas of the liberal arts and examines the importance and meaning of a liberal arts education that integrates learning across the disciplines. The course engages students in adult learning methods and emphasizes skills of critical self-reflection for learning, reading for comprehension and deeper understanding, effective class participation, and thinking and writing at the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

LAS 20020 College Seminar II:Developing Learning Tools

This second of two foundational LAS courses examines Ottawa’s liberal arts breadth areas in greater depth. Students acquire skills for learning in particular disciplines, including developing research questions and methods in different breadth areas. Students learn to integrate and synthesize information as they read scholarly articles and develop a properly cited research paper.

LAS 30012 Proseminar

In addition to introducing students to the four breadth areas – Value/Meaning, Social/Civic, Science/Description, and Art/Expression - this course addresses the task of educational planning, but does so in the larger context of self-examination as the students evaluate the resources of the course. The course serves as an introduction to the Ottawa University program, allowing students to get a sense of the nature and level of the University’s expectations and reintroducing students who have been away from formal education for some time to the character and rhythms of the academic enterprise.

LAS 45012 Graduation Review

As the final course in the LAS sequence, graduation review asks students to revisit the breadth areas first introduced in proseminar, exploring them this time in the context of globalization and cross-cultural concerns. As in proseminar, students respond in discussions and reflective papers to issues raised by readings and/or other media selected for their quality and relevance to the areas in question. Close attention is paid to the students’ communication skills as well as their mastery of the course’s substantive content. As a culminating experience, graduation review also asks students to assess their Ottawa University program (both the major and the liberal arts components) in terms of the process of their education and in terms of their achievement of the Ottawa University LAS

program outcomes.