The below is informed in part by GEMs, a distillation of AAC&U design principles and process recommendations in the context of general education. It summarizes three key questions we may ask as we chart our way through the process of GE reform at Lewis & Clark College. Each question represents a major theme for informed conversation, reflection, and debate throughout our community. I welcome your comments, and similar posts by others, as we move forward.
- What are our desired student learning outcomes? This is GEMs speak (they also use the word “proficiencies”) for: what are the distinctive things we want our students to learn at Lewis & Clark? The challenge here may lie in the “distinctive,” and the “we”:
- Many well-intentioned efforts at institutions of higher education end up not far from existing statements such as AAC&U’s essential learning outcomes—understandable given the broadly shared ethos of liberal education in the U.S., but less helpful in identifying what is unique to a given institution.
- Additionally, students and faculty typically constitute a highly diverse “we,” with a wide range of desires and needs that guide their learning.
- Though continued conversation on our desired learning outcomes is important, evidencing the “agency and self-direction” element of GEMs, we may face challenges in achieving consensus over anything distinctive. One option could be to go with what we as a community have already devised, e.g., our 2011 core themes (with which our accreditors expect Lewis & Clark’s learning curriculum to be aligned).
- How shall we achieve these learning outcomes? GEMs reminds us that liberal education constitutes a variety of learning contexts and experiences:
- The shared curriculum. Let’s admit it: the term “general education,” while ubiquitous, fails to ignite the imagination; yet the fact that GE is a shared curriculum, involving students across all major fields of study and including a wide range of disciplinary themes, can be a powerful ingredient in building community. The shared curriculum may consist of elective as well as required elements, with a wide variety of possible models. Certain learning outcomes may be well served by the shared curriculum: as one example, our core theme “We are a community that commits itself to diversity and sustainability as dimensions of a just society” arguably would benefit from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives.
- The major curriculum. While each major may have discipline-specific learning outcomes, our students’ majors also convey broad learning benefits; one related core theme is “We are a community of scholars vigorously engaged in learning, teaching, research, and creative inquiry.” There are many ways the major and shared curriculum may work together toward common ends. One innovative example found in some institutions (and actually a part of our GE curriculum from 1985-1993) involves a GE capstone applying the expertise of students from a variety of majors toward a common theme or problem.
- The co-curriculum. Student learning experiences do not begin and end in the classroom or lab: campus life, community service, clubs, and other integral activities must be considered as well. Here, core themes such as “We are a community that integrates theory and practice within the overall educational experience” may be especially pertinent.
- Taken together, these three learning contexts constitute the broad “integrative learning and problem-based inquiry” approach recommended in GEMs, and weave GE into the larger learning ethos of our institution.
- How are we doing relative to these learning outcomes? GEMs calls for “transparency and assessment” and “equity” as we consider these learning outcomes/proficiencies—a frank conversation dedicated to ongoing reflection, and applied to ongoing improvement in our learning curriculum. Here we face additional opportunities and challenges:
- How are we to assess broad learning outcome language, such as is found in our four core themes? There is quite a literature how to assess broad learning outcomes (e.g., GEMs discusses student “signature work” as evidence), and recent practice suggests that assessment is far more than measurement: ultimately, any empirical indicators we conjure up ideally inform sustained conversation and debate, with “transparency” suggesting a commitment toward honesty in our mutual reflection.
- How are we doing with equity? This is an important conversation we’ve had at Lewis & Clark for some time, and perhaps especially this academic year regarding diversity and inclusion and related student efforts. Our GE reform efforts thus come at an opportune moment to put questions of equity front and center.
- What is assessment for? It’s easy to think that assessment is for reports to accreditors—and it is, in part. But assessment ultimately helps us consider improvements to our learning environment, and gauge whether these improvements are working. Ultimately, our accreditors are interested in how we use assessment, not just whether we do it—so we might as well make it work for what we value here at Lewis & Clark.