General Education Committee's Current Work

Fall 2011:

The committee recognizes that first-year experiences in foundational writing and information literacy are necessary but not sufficient to develop the full range of desireable outcomes for undergraduates.  We begin with a focus on first-year courses in order to examine the important first steps students take in this area.  Key achievements include the fact that the committee:

• visited school/college faculty meetings to provide upates, and also to begin a preliminary conversation about how writing and information literacy outcomes in the disciplines might be supported
• established, with support from the Provost, a first-year writing working group. This group
  • refined draft outcomes for writing and information literacy in foundational courses
  • secured commitments from instructors of 4 TAP sections, 4 Honor Seminar sections, and 4 sections of English 1 to participate in a pilot that will test the feasibility of having common outcomes across these 3 different courses
  • planned a May curriculum workshop for pilot instructors
  • drafted an assessment plan for next year (which will both assess the feasibility of such work and provide guidance for the committee on larger issues of writing assessment structure)
• with the support of the Office of Institutional Studies, explored the use of the NSSE data in general education writing assessment. We see many useful possibilities here

Fall 2012:

The committe expects to focus on writing and information literacy beyond the first year, as the first year working group carries out the pilot.

Last modified June 13 2012 11:11 AM