Approved by Senate | 2/13/04

Proposal to Revise General Education Goals

Approved by the Undergraduate Council 1/30/04

The Undergraduate Council proposes the following revisions to the General Education goals.

Goal I. Communication

1. Students communicate effectively using appropriate writing conventions and formats.

2. Students communicate effectively using appropriate oral or sign conventions and formats.

Goal II. Collaboration

1. Students participate effectively in collaborative activities.

Goal III. Critical Thinking

1. Students formulate appropriate questions for research.

2. Students effectively collect appropriate evidence.

3. Students appropriately evaluate claims, arguments, evidence and hypotheses.

4. Students use the results of analysis to appropriately construct new arguments and formulate new questions.

Goal IV. Contemporary Issues

1. Students effectively analyze contemporary issues within the context of diverse disciplinary perspectives.

2. Students effectively analyze contemporary multicultural, global, and international questions.

Goal V. Quantitative Literacy

1. Students effectively perform arithmetic operations, as well as reason and draw appropriate conclusions from numerical information.

2. Students effectively translate problem situations into symbolic representations and use those representations to solve problems.

Goal V. Technology

1. Students effectively use computers and other technology appropriate to their discipline.

Rationale

Feedback from departments indicated that the General Education goals originally agreed to by the Senate (approved 3/22/01) were difficult to use as learning outcomes. Specifically, three issues arose as complicating learning outcomes assessment:

1. the conflating of writing and oral competencies created difficulties for course assessments where one, but not the other, was a course outcome;

2. the goal of learning and working collaboratively was not clearly stated in the original goal statements; and

3. the confusion between critical thinking and analysis of information often led departments to chose one and ignore the second.

In addition, the Senate policy (approved 3/16/99) specifying computer competency as an assessable outcome was not reflected in the General Education goals. Finally, there was no mention of quantitative literacy in the previous set of goals.

The Undergraduate Council has revised the General Education goals by

1. separating writing and oral competencies;

2. specifying the group communication goal as a collaborative activity goal;

3. recognizing that analysis of information is a subcategory of critical thinking;

4. adding quantitative literacy as a General Education goal; and

5. adding computer competence and other technology as a General Education goal.

These revised goals now reflect a) what departments have indicated to be assessable learning outcomes, and b) a more comprehensive set of outcomes that includes technology and quantitative skills.