FAQs | Background
- What's wrong with our current GE?
- What might students get out of the new program?
- What might faculty get out of the new program?
What's wrong with our current GE?
- Most crucially, our current GE does not provide a shared educational vision linked
to the university mission. A GE program that articulates a clear set of ideas can
help students and faculty carry these ideas forward into the rest of the curriculum
and co-curriculum.
- Our current GE assessment plan is unworkable. There is no way to link what students
learn and what's happening in courses to our stated outcomes, short of devising a
stand-study for WASC. Increasingly, both the CSU and WASC expect integrated, embedded
assessment, and our current GE program makes that impossible. The new GE program will
achieve such assessment without adverse impacts on faculty, particularly during the
lead-in to accreditation visits.
- The current "distribution model" creates a chaotic experience for students in which they often fail to connect course work to essential learning.
What might students get out of the new program? | Back to Questions
Students who now see GE as “just” checking of boxes, not related to their major, extra stuff they don’t need, etc. instead will have the opportunity to see how one discipline relates to another in a problem-solving and/or community context.
The e-portfolio offers the potential for students to reflect on the mission-based outcomes and their interrelationship to their studies and their growth as citizens.
The e-portfolio also offers the possibility of different “views” of the stored evidence of having achieved learning outcomes. Students could present aspects of their university studies work to prospective employers who will see a well-rounded, articulate student, presenting a “public face” for their intellectual achievements.
What might faculty get out of the new program? | Back to Questions
Faculty involved in teams building rubrics for each outcome and getting trained and/or training others in applying rubrics (sometimes referred to as “norming”) have the opportunity to develop their teaching skills.
As is true now for those who do it, faculty team who team teach as part of University Studies have the opportunity to broaden their own research methodologies, bring new questions to their work, through interaction with colleagues from different disciplinary backgrounds.
Having assessment built in to the University Studies courses will save faculty time during course level, program, and university-wide assessment and review.