Please note: These Principles are works in progress, not stone. Please take advantage of the feedback mechanisms including upcoming focus groups, listening circles, surveys, public forums, and email that are available to you for input to the committee. We look forward to hearing from you!
General Education Process Principles
STUDENTS: Prioritize students, first and always.
ENGAGEMENT: Engage and collaborate with all relevant stakeholders, including historically marginalized groups. Listen genuinely.
COMMUNICATION: Ensure open, straightforward, and frequent communication throughout the process.
CULTURE: Build a campus wide culture that values general education and generates excitement about general education.
RESPONSIBILITY: Move the process forward with careful consideration of the impact of general education on the campus community.
RESOURCES: Advocate for resources to support general education in the short and long term.
ASSESSMENT: Support the development of meaningful ongoing gen ed assessment.
ALIGNMENT: Align work with WSU mission, vision, and values.
EQUITY: Prioritize equity in all that we do.
TIMELINE: Establish a timeline for the development and implementation of the general education program.
RESEARCH: Support recommendations with research and data.
SUSTAINABILITY: Establish mechanisms and structures for a sustainable, innovative, and adaptive general education program.
General Education Design Principles
Our general education will:
Our general education model WILL:
Equity must be addressed in relation to the structure and implementation of general education. According to the AAC&U GEMS Design Principles for General Education, gen ed should “advance practices and policies that are aimed at achieving the full spectrum of learning outcomes” for all students, including students of color, low-income and first generation students, students with disabilities, veterans and military, and returning adult students. A 2013 study of student engagement conducted by NSSE showed that students of color experienced fewer high-impact practices which prepare students for graduate school and/or careers (Step up and Lead for Equity). To address this, institutions must strive for “inclusive excellence” which requires that “underserved students are experiencing the high-impact practices and engaging in the inquiry-based learning that is essential in any high-quality liberal education.” High-impact practices are “teaching and learning practices that have been widely tested and have been shown to be beneficial for college students from many backgrounds” (AAC&U’s High Impact Educational Practices). High impact practices include common intellectual experiences (“such as a set of required common courses or a vertically organized general education program that includes advanced integrative studies and/or required participation in a learning community”), learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative assignments and projects, undergraduate research, diversity/global learning, e-portfolios, internships, and capstone courses and projects.
All stakeholders should be able to understand WHAT the gen ed requirements and goals are and WHY they are the requirements and goals. Gen ed requirements shouldn’t be overly complicated and confusing and students and faculty should all have a strong sense of gen ed’s purpose. Our current gen ed courses are perceived by many as obstacles to the major course work and to graduation; a more purposeful general education with a clear sense of mission will engage students and faculty.
A general education that has a clear sense of mission and that positions students to tackle complex problems has the potential to generate excitement among students and faculty. Furthermore, distinctive general education programs can serve as a recruitment and retention tool.
The primary purpose of assessment is to gather information that will inform the actions faculty and institutions take to improve teaching and learning (Walvoord). Transformative assessment, “a process that is appropriate, meaningful, sustainable, flexible, and ongoing,” can help ensure that general education programs are fully integrated into “the overall educational ethos of the institution” (Wehlburg 91). Leaders in assessment process research argue that faculty, students, and staff should first “talk about the goals, courses, and outcomes of general education” and that faculty should then work collaboratively to develop assessment processes that incorporate different approaches disciplines take in gathering information about student learning (AAC&U GEMS; Furman 135; Rohrbacher 35). General education assessment is not focused on evaluating individual faculty but should instead help an institution ensure that the goals for general education are clear to everyone and that students’ work is the evidence used to determine how well these goals are being met (AAC&U GEMS). At its best, general education assessment encourages and supports faculty participation by being “fundamentally connected with the work they are already doing” (Carpenter and Fitzmaurice; Banta and Palomba 167); fosters collaboration across disciplines around teaching; produces data that can help validate innovative, new pedagogical approaches; and leads to meaningful improvements in student learning, teaching, and curriculum (Rohrbacher 28).
Current best practices in general education focus on integrative learning (The Chronicle of Higher Ed: Reforming Gen Ed; AAC&U GEMS Design Principles for General Education). According to the AAC&U, integrative Learning “is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond the campus”(Integrative and Applied Learning VALUE Rubric). An integrative approach positions students as active learners who are in charge of their learning. In a gen ed program that is integrative students develop “the ability to make, recognize, and evaluate connections among disparate concepts, fields, or contexts” (AAC&U Leading Initiatives for Integrative Learning).
One way that universities ensure that students are practicing integrative thinking is by requiring “signature work.” To produce signature work students must work closely with a faculty member and use “cumulative learning” to complete a problem-based project that “expresses new insights and learning” over the course of at least one semester. Common sites for integrative learning and signature work include community engagement courses, project-based learning courses, learning communities, e-portfolios, and capstones.
General education courses should ask students to grapple with big questions, develop and use tools to conduct research, and communicate what students gain from understanding how fields of study differ from and complement each other (Handstedt; Flaherty). General Education coursework that has students practice “ways of thinking” across a range of disciplines is one of “The Elements of a Modern Gen Ed. Curriculum” advocated for by the AAC&U. In these classes, students are not simply exposed to introductory or basic content material, but instead learn and apply the methods and lenses used within fields and disciplines, to ask questions such as: “What does it mean to think like a scientist, for example? How would a historian approach a modern political problem?” (Reforming Gen Ed 13).
A general education program that is purposefully woven throughout the undergraduate experience provides students opportunities to practice and build on what our institution deems to be essential skills and ways of knowing. General education that is intentional, sequential, and cumulative acknowledges that students cannot learn complex skills in one course but that these skills must be scaffolded and reinforced throughout their college career (Reforming Gen Ed).
General education should also provide learning experiences that generate enduring understandings and lasting skills and proficiencies that students will carry forward into their lives beyond Westfield State.
