This document is a brief discussion of issues for Gen Ed reform from conversations in the Fall of 2023.
Category: Working Documents Archive
We had three hours with faculty during Spring Quarter Campus Community Day. We launched new Institutional Learning Outcome (ILO) working groups for 6 new ILOs at this meeting. These were as follows:
- Cultural Diversity
- Critical Thinking
- Information Literacy
- Quantitative Reasoning
- Communication
- Sustainability
These working groups met several times over Spring Quarter. A potential 7th, Creative Thinking, was also considered later in the quarter.
Here are the slides from the Spring Quarter Campus Community Day:
Categories
Gen Ed Reform Summary
This is a summary of Gen Ed Reform at BC in bullet points sent out to faculty in January of 2024
Following our presentation of the TILTed model during Opening Week 2023, we held a series of sessions to elicit feedback from faculty. Several people were looking for further clarification of what problems we hoped to solve and how the presented model would address these. A result of these conversations was the following note sent around to faculty in October of 2023:
These are the slides presented to faculty at opening day in September of 2023:
And here is the write-up sent out to all faculty shortly after the opening day meeting:
Categories
Gen Ed at BC
These slides were presented faculty meeting in the Spring of 2023.
This is the first of our General Education Working Documents. It was initially shared with BC academic deans in January of 2023.
The Gen Ed Steering Committee has explored a range of possible models for a new Gen Ed program at BC. We are not in a position to sign on to a new model in an informed and deliberate manner without taking this step. There are a number of dimensions along which models for Gen Ed vary. Key factors include the number, and type of outcomes, the continuum from core curriculum to total infusion with various hybrid arrangements in between, and the various methods of assessment.
Li Liu from CMST presented on Cascadia’s infusion model. Cascadia has four learning outcomes which are infused across all courses. A constraint for this model is that substantial content cannot be delivered to all students. For instance, we could not expect every course on campus to deliver meaningful instruction on Cultural Diversity. Different courses on campus often have overlapping curriculum. But there is no significant content that is taught in all of our courses. For this reason, an infusion model like Cascadia’s cannot have content-based outcomes. Outcomes that are shared by every course offered across campus must be limited to addressing near universal aspects of the teaching and learning process. If there is significant curriculum beyond required English and Math courses that we’d like all of our students to get as students at BC, the Cascadia model will not deliver this.
We also briefly discussed a core curriculum model. A core curriculum model would deliver instruction in Gen Ed outcomes through a few required courses. We might, for instance, have a required course that focuses on communication and critical thinking, and another that focuses on cultural diversity and issues of justice more broadly. The major drawback of going this route would be the substantial disruption to enrollment patterns it would entail. In the case of this example, a full third of both Humanities and Social Science distribution requirements would be fully occupied by required core classes.
The TILT model proposed by our AAC&U team is a flexible hybrid model. Its key features include a limited number of Gen Ed outcomes and Gen Ed subcommittees to the CAC for each outcome. The subcommittees are charged with vetting courses for certification in a Gen Ed, supporting programs in brining courses up to curricular standards, administering and evaluating assessment of their Gen Ed, and using these results to continually improve institution wide education in their Gen Ed. This model allows for Gen Ed outcomes with significant content to reach all our students, but without dramatically disrupting enrollment patterns. The TILT model leaves open the question of just how robust the curricular standards for each Gen Ed outcome will be and just how widely they will be infused across programs. Indeed, these matters remain open to fine tuning even after implementation of the TILT model.
The Gen Ed Steering Committee has explored these issues to some degree. Some of these issues were previously explored last year by FACT and the AAC&U team along with many others in our early initial conversations. We are eager to broaden that discussion, though we also realize that the details of model choice may not be of highest concern to many faculty.
BC is an outlier in terms of the number of outcomes. Most institutions have under a half dozen Gen Ed outcomes. The most frequently claimed Gen Ed outcomes at institutions around the state are communications and critical thinking. If our Gen Ed outcomes are to be Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs) that reach all of our degree seeking students, they will have to be rather few in number. If we hope to teach our Gen Eds in a substantial meaningful way, they cannot be indiscriminately infused across campus.
