Proposed Shared Learning Outcomes for UTC [DRAFT]
Proposed Goal of General Education Curriculum: General education courses ask students to explore specific domains of knowledge utilizing a variety of skills and approaches with the goal of personal and professional growth. The courses that cross disciplines offer students the time and space to explore, connect, and prepare for the opportunities and challenges within their major.
An educational experience at UTC includes a global and local examination of the human experience as an ecosystem across cultures in the natural and physical world. This kind of examination requires both intellectual and practical skills, recognizes personal and social responsibility as a valuable part of the educational experience, and seeks to actively integrate knowledge and skills across disciplines and beyond the university. Ultimately, this educational experience plants the seeds for lifelong learning.
General Education Philosophy
General education courses ask students to explore specific domains of knowledge utilizing a variety of skills and approaches with the goal of personal and professional growth. These courses that cross disciplines offer students the time and space to explore, connect, and prepare for the opportunities and challenges within each major.
Shared Educational Values (The 11 A.S.K.s) (Abilities.Skills.Knowledge)
Communication in a Variety of Genres and Settings
Communicate to increase knowledge, to foster understanding or to promote change through any medium in a manner appropriate to the target audience and situation.
Information Literacy
Know when information is required and be able to locate, evaluate, and simultaneously extract and construct meaning in an effective and responsible manner.
Intercultural Literacy
Reflect knowledge, skills, and attitudes to engage others meaningfully, to place social/economic justice in historical and political context, to put culture at the core of learning and to adapt empathetically and flexibly to unfamiliar ways of being.
Ethical Decision Making
Recognize ethical issues when presented in a complex context, either historical or contemporary, practice ethical decision making skills, learn how to describe and analyze positions on ethical issues, and consider the ramifications of alternative actions.
Inquiry and Analysis
Systematically identify and explore issues/objects/works, organize and synthesize the findings individually and/or in groups, and understand the implications and patterns offered by the analysis.
Quantitative Literacy
Reason and solve quantitative problems from authentic contexts and everyday situations to create arguments supported by quantitative evidence and clearly communicate those arguments in an appropriate format such words, tables, graphs, mathematical equations, etc….
Creativity or Creative Thinking
Think, react, and work in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking as well the capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways.
Critical Thinking
Explore issues, ideas, artifacts and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion through the processes of designing, evaluating and implementing a strategy to answer an open-ended question or achieve a desired goal.
Collaboration in Diverse Groups
Foster a climate of respect, cooperation, and critique across a variety of beliefs with the goal of learning to be a productive team member, enriching the educational experience, and increasing the quality of the final outcomes.
Civic Engagement
Recognize a responsibility to make a difference, by developing the knowledge, skills, values and motivation to advocate, promote and pursue engagement in the community.
Integrative and Applied Learning
Integrate personal and educational learning across courses, over time, and between campus and community life to effectively apply knowledge to complex problems in real world settings.
* Competencies adapted from “The Essential Learning Outcomes” developed by the AAC&U.
Rhodes, Terrel L. Assessing Outcomes and Improving Achievements: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010
