Integrated Learning

To navigate life, it is necessary to link knowledge and skills across contexts. Without this ability, one begins each new job, new course, and new relationship from scratch. The ability to put things together is an essential element of human learning and development. As such, integration of learning is a highly desired skill and a central outcome of higher education.

The term integration of learning describes the cognitive developmental process that occurs for college students, not the practices that facilitate it. The educational practices often described as integrative (e.g., working on a project that requires drawing on multiple sources, taking an interdisciplinary course, or participating in a study abroad experience) may facilitate integration of learning, but they do not describe an individual’s cognitive process per se, nor how those processes evolve over time. Integration of learning captures both the individual’s cognitive process and how it develops over time.

In an article in the American Educational Research Journal in 2012, James Barber defined integration of learning as the ability to:

Integrated learning is not limited to the traditional college classroom or campus. Instead, learning happens throughout an individual’s life experience, akin to John Dewey’s notion of experience as education. In a higher education setting, important learning is happening in residence halls, student organizations, internships, athletic teams, and study abroad experiences. This learning is all in addition to the wealth of prior knowledge that a student brings with them to college or university. Students are not blank slates; most come to higher education with at least 17 years of lived experience (and often much more) to build upon. Then, there is the learning happening in the formal structured curriculum, through courses, academic majors, and undergraduate research. Learning is occurring in all these contexts, and [Page 821]new ideas are constantly mingling with prior knowledge. There is, then, a desperate need for students to become adept at integrating learning across contexts.