Core Category Learning Outcomes
Foundation Skills
Course Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, successful students will be able to:
• Apply Academic Skill Building through a variety of ways including but not limited to: make use of academic services across campus, develop a 4-year plan with the help of an advisor, identify career path(s) using the Strong Interest Survey, define and/or reflect on academic successes and academic skills.
• Demonstrate Campus and Community Engagement by participating in university life outside the classroom in a variety of ways including but not limited to: identify organizations and events of interest, attend university and/or community events, recognize and/or reflect on the importance of participation in events on a personal, academic, and professional level.
Students completing Rhetoric and Composition II will have achieved academic literacy; will have learned the academic discourse conventions (the basic rules for writing academic prose); and will have developed an enhanced knowledge of cultural awareness. To achieve these goals, all Rhetoric and Composition II students will be required to write at least 20 pages (6000 words) of revised, finished prose, developed through a process of invention, development, and revision. Assignments, either individually or in combination, will ask students to practice the following: inquiring; convincing; persuading; mediating or resolving; and reflecting.
The goal of communication studies courses in the New University Core Curriculum is to foster students’ ability to create effective and ethical oral communication. By achieving this goal, students learn to become proficient, critical consumers and producers of messages and interactions at the personal, social, civic and professional levels and learn basic skills to live wisely in a diverse and global community.
A foundational experience in quantitative reasoning will provide a rigorous mathematical curriculum applied to real world problem solving. The outcomes should deepen, extend, and be distinct from Indiana high school mathematics requirements.
A Foundation Skills course within the Physical Activity and Wellness core category provides a comprehensive understanding of the importance of physical health and valuing and maintaining overall physical, intellectual, emotional, social, environmental, spiritual, and occupational well-being.
Ways of Knowing
OUTCOME 1: Students will be able to utilize problem solving, the process of designing, evaluating, and implementing a strategy or strategies to answer an open-ended question or achieve a desired goal, as defined by the way of knowing.
OUTCOME 2: Students will be able to apply methods of inquiry and analysis, the systematic process of exploring issues/objects/works through the collection and process of breaking complex topics or issues into parts to gain a better understanding of them that result in informed conclusions/judgments, as identified by the way of knowing.
OUTCOME 3: The student will demonstrate the ability to know when there is a need for information, be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand.
OUTCOME 4: The student will design and execute a performance of the way of knowing. A performance is defined as: A dynamic and sustained act that brings together knowing and doing (creating a painting, solving an experimental design problem, developing a public relations strategy for a business, etc.); performance makes learning observable.
CREATIVE AND AESTHETIC EXPRESSION: Students demonstrate an understanding of the uses of creative expression and aesthetic interpretation in the fine, performing, or literary arts and how these works express ideas and evoke feelings.
HISTORICAL INQUIRY: Students demonstrate an understanding of the uses of documents and artifacts as a method and means of relating events, ideas, and achievements to the context of their times, examining the significance of continuity and change, and assessing the roles of individuals, institutions, and social processes on the human experience.
MORAL AND ETHICAL REASONING: Students demonstrate an understanding of the uses of ethical reasoning in determining obligations to others and one's responsibility for the common good.
SOCIAL INQUIRY: Students demonstrate an understanding of individual development, social interaction, and social behavior in the organization of political, religious, social, and economic groups and institutions.
WORLD LANGUAGES AND CULTURE: Students demonstrate an understanding of the boundaries within which individuals operate in order to feel a sense of belonging to a society or group, gained through the study of non-native languages or cultures.
SCIENTIFIC AND MATHEMATICAL INQUIRY is organized into three subcategories:
- EXPERIMENTAL: Students will be able to demonstrate the ability to use appropriate discipline-specific observational, quantitative, or technological methods.
- DEDUCTIVE: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the uses of deductive reasoning and proof.
- INFERENTIAL: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of the uses of statistical inference.
Embedded Experiences
Diversity Embedded Experiences must address critically the differences among individuals and groups, representing the full spectrum of human characteristics, ideas, and worldviews.
Global learning is a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic, and political) and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability. Through global learning, students should 1) become informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, 2) seek to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and 3) address the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably.
Criteria for Writing Intensive Embedded Experiences are as follow: (1) Writing assignments should be integrated throughout the semester and used to enhance the learning of course content; (2) Written assignments should constitute a significant portion of the course grade, counting for a minimum of 35% of total course evaluation in a three credit-hour course, or its equivalent; (3) Instruction should include brief lessons on writing in the particular discipline; (4) Each course should have at least one sustained or long-term writing project, e.g., a research paper, an argument, a detailed lab results report; (5) The sustained project should synthesize some of the major objectives of the course; (6) At least one assignment must involve instructor feedback on student drafts and opportunities for revision; and (7) Each college/department should determine broad parameters for what constitutes acceptable writing in the discipline(s).