Twenty-first Century Skills Curriculum Integration Activities

FIPSE Skills: As part of the FIPSE grant's 21st century skills (or general education core skills) integration effort into MCC's course curriculum, the following projects will apply to this course:

Employability Skills: Toward the end of the 20th century, many common skills that were routinely used to educate the local citizenry were subtly discarded as the quantity and diversity of learnable information became overwhelming through the rapid progress made during the post World War II period. These skills having been deemphasized, are now reintroduced as the 21st century skills. These skills are part and parcel of one's basic educational development that prepares an individual for the competitive workplace.

The CAP Paper: The Community Activity Projects incorporates several 21st century skills including communications skills and information management skills (searching for and identifying appropriate information, interviewing, writing); community skills (interest and participation in issues for the common good); interpersonal skills (develop interviewing skills); and technology skills (gleaning websites for target information, sending/receiving emails etc.).

Group Activities: Two activities that requires students to work and present projects in groups of three (or two in smaller classes; less than 20 students). These activities emaphasizes the cultivation of personal and interpersonal skills.

Debating Activities: At the rudimentary levels of college education, most students are less confident of their language skills. This lack of confidence is typically protrayed by the fear of public speaking or vocal self-expression. The "cornucopian vs environmentalist debate" will encourage students to develop opinions on specific controversial issues, think critically, and communicate these opinions to their peers in a effective, and congenial manner or atmosphere. Although the gist of this exercise is to improve students' communication, because it is practicing how to agree and disagree, it is another example of applying critical-thinking, and interpersonal skills.