General Education Assessment

Contact Kathleen McSharry
Director of General Education

The General Education Guidelines [pdf] require that General Education courses be assessed to measure if students are meeting the GE learning outcomes (per University Policy S22-5 [pdf]). The General Education Program has three program goals and nine program learning outcomes (PLOs). Each GE Area has defined GE Area Outcomes. 

Important Changes to Annual GE Assessment Procedures

Beginning fall 2022, a number of changes will be implemented to GE assessment processes. 

Most important, programs will no longer need to submit annual GE course reports to Undergraduate Education. Rather, they are to carry on assessing their GE courses and collecting GE assessment data to store internally, and produce them at the time of course recertification and Program Planning. 

Instead of the annual GE course reports, Undergraduate Education will assess specific GE PLOs each year. In fall 2022, we are focused on Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice (PLO 6). Any courses in GE Areas that map to this PLO will be asked to submit assessment materials this fall. The schedule for assessing all nine GE PLOs appears below.  Faculty will be asked to use a community-designed rubric to assess how students are meeting PLO 6.

GE Course Syllabus Review Process

In addition to the program assessment process, this fall we will start reviewing GE course syllabi under the new guidelines. This will be a five-semester process that will involve departments submitting master syllabi, along with sample assignments, for their GE courses in designated areas.  The syllabi should be annotated, noting which assignments are designed to assess the GE Area Learning Outcome (ALO). The sample assignments will clarify how a given assignment relates to a particular ALO. This is not assessment as such; rather, it is an effort to support departments as they transition GE courses to the new GE Guidelines, in Area Learning Outcomes and content requirements. In Fall 2022, we are asking for an updated syllabus for courses in Areas A1, A2, and A3, as well as stand-alone American Institutions courses. 

2021-2023 GE PLO Assessment Schedule

The 2021-2023 Assessment Schedule for the GE PLOs is identified in the following chart, where "A" indicates the year the PLO is assessed. 

# Title S21 F21 S22 F22 S23 F23
1   Oral Communication           A
2   Written Communication   A        
3   Critical Thinking A          
4   Quantitative Reasoning     A      
5   Information Literacy   A        
6   Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice       A    
7   Civic and Global Engagement         A  
8   Integration and Application           A
9   Reflection and Self-Assessment         A  

GE Assessment Resources