Common Student Learning Outcomes for the Core Curriculum
University System of Georgia
General Education in the University System of Georgia
From the origins of intellectual study to the present, general education has been a key to a fulfilling life of self-knowledge, self-reflection, critical awareness, and lifelong learning. General education has traditionally focused on oral and written communication, quantitative reasoning and mathematics, studies in culture and society, scientific reasoning, and aesthetic appreciation. Today, general education also assists students in their understanding of technology, information literacy, diversity, and global awareness. In meeting all of these needs, general education provides college students with their best opportunity to experience the breadth of human knowledge and the ways that knowledge in various disciplines is interrelated.
In the University System of Georgia, general education programs consist of a group of courses known as the Core Curriculum as well as other courses and co-curricular experiences specific to each institution. The attainment of general education learning outcomes prepares responsible, reflective citizens who adapt constructively to change. General education programs impart knowledge, values, skills, and behaviors related to critical thinking and logical problem-solving. General education includes opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and experiences that increase intellectual curiosity, providing the basis for advanced study in the variety of fields offered by today's colleges and universities.
Approved by the Council on General Education, October, 2004
Approved by the Chief Academic Officers, December, 2004
At the request of the Regents' Advisory Committee on Institutional Effectiveness (RACIE), the Council on General Education developed the following set of student learning outcomes. They are derived from the sets of student learning outcomes submitted by institutions of the University System at the time they undertook conversion from the quarter calendar to the semester calendar. RACIE intends to use the common set of outcomes to develop materials that it will use to assist groups of institutions in assessing their Core Curricula as a part of the accreditation process.
The Council decided not set out separate learning outcomes for critical thinking and technology skills even though those outcomes were deemed important. Instead, the Council treated them as components of each learning outcome, where appropriate.
The Council on General Education believes that this set of learning outcomes captures the common elements of the institutional learning outcomes. There are, however, distinct learning outcomes at most institutions, often associated with Area B of the Core Curriculum. These are not represented in the set of learning outcomes presented below. When the set of common learning outcomes was complete, the Council speculated that it corresponded to approximately eighty per cent of any given institution's learning outcomes.
Communications: Oral and written communication will be characterized by clarity, critical analysis, logic, coherence, persuasion, precision, and rhetorical awareness.
Competence within the context of collegiate general education is defined by the following outcomes:
- Ability to assimilate, analyze, and present in oral and written forms, a body of information;
- Ability to analyze arguments;
- Ability to adapt communication to circumstances and audience;
- Ability to consider and accommodate opposing points of view;
- Ability to interpret content of written materials on related topics from various disciplines;
- Ability to communicate in various modes and media, including the proper use of appropriate technology;
- Ability to produce communication that is stylistically appropriate and mature;
- Ability to communicate in standard English for academic and professional contexts;
- Ability to interpret inferences and develop subtleties of symbolic and indirect discourse;
- Ability to sustain a consistent purpose and point of view;
- Ability to compose effective written materials for various academic and professional contexts.
Quantitative Reasoning and Mathematics: quantitative reasoning and mathematics will be characterized by logic, critical evaluation, analysis, synthesis generalization, modeling, and verbal, numeric, graphical, and symbolic problem solving.
Competence within the context of collegiate general education objectives is defined by the following outcomes:
- Ability to model situations from a variety of settings in generalized mathematical forms;
- Ability to express and manipulate mathematical information, concepts, and thoughts in verbal, numeric, graphical and symbolic form while solving a variety of problems;
- Ability to solve multiple-step problems through different (inductive, deductive and symbolic) modes of reasoning;
- Ability to properly use appropriate technology in the evaluation, analysis, and synthesis of information in problem-solving situations;
- Ability to shift among the verbal, numeric, graphical and symbolic modes of considering relationships;
- Ability to extract quantitative data from a given situation, translate the data into information in various modes, evaluate the information, abstract essential information, make logical deductions, and arrive at reasonable conclusions;
- Ability to employ quantitative reasoning appropriately while applying scientific methodology to explore nature and the universe;
- Ability to discern the impact of quantitative reasoning and mathematics on the sciences, society, and one's personal life.
Cultural and Social Perspectives: Cultural and social perspective will be characterized by cultural awareness and an understanding of the complexity and dynamic nature of social/political/economic systems; human and institutional behavior, values, and belief systems; historical and spatial relationship; and, flexibility, open-mindedness, and tolerance.
Competence within the context of collegiate general education objectives is defined by the following outcomes:
- Ability to relate local, national, and global social policy;
- Ability to describe how historical, economic, political, social, and spatial relationships develop, persist, and change;
- Ability to articulate the complexity of human behavior as functions of the commonality and diversity within groups;
- Ability to appreciate and respect diversity among people and recognize the roles various peoples played in their culture;
- Ability to identify and analyze both contemporary and historical perspectives on contemporary issues;
- Ability to relate the contributions of groups and individuals to the history of ideas and belief systems;
- Ability to critically analyze one's own culture.
Scientific Reasoning: Scientific reasoning will be characterized by understanding and applying scientific method, laboratory techniques, mathematical principles, and experimental design to natural phenomena.
Competence within the context of collegiate general education objectives is defined by the following outcomes:
- Ability to understand basic scientific principles, theories, laws as they apply to all scientific disciplines;
- Ability to demonstrate knowledge in at least one area of science;
- Ability to discern the role in and impact on science on society;
- Ability to identify and properly use appropriate technologies for scientific inquiry and communication including collecting and analyzing scientific data;
- Ability to understand the physical universe and science's relationship to it;
- Ability to understand the changing nature of science;
- Ability to understand the scope and limits on the appropriateness of scientific inquiry to physical phenomena;
- Ability to demonstrate critical observation and analysis;
- Ability to apply mathematical principles to scientific inquiry, including the use of statistics and formulae to understand quantitative data.
Aesthetic Perspective: Aesthetic perspective will be characterized by critical appreciation of and ability to make informed aesthetic judgments about the arts of various cultures as media for human expression:
Competence within the context of collegiate general education is defined by the following outcomes:
- Ability to make informed judgments about art forms from various cultures including one's own culture;
- Ability to recognize the fine, literary, and performing arts as expressions of human experience;
- Ability to discern the impact and role of artistic and literary achievement in society and one's personal life.