During the 1998-99 academic year, teams of faculty from each of the four General Education Foundation areas (written communication, oral communication, critical thinking, and mathematics/quantitative reasoning) met with representatives of the General Education Governing Committee to develop the following position papers. They address content expectations for courses that meet requirements for the four foundation areas, and provide suggestions for faculty teaching in other areas of general education who wish to help students continue to develop these skills over the entire General Education experience.

Category A.1 – Written Communication

I.  Introduction
Expository writing courses at the 100 to 199 levels should teach students to compose texts in which they discover and explain the significance of information, opinions, ideas, and theories.  It is this sense of finding and explaining what is significant that also makes writing a form of inquiry, that is, disciplined inquiry into any given topic and subject.  While expository writing courses primarily help students become better writers, when writing is approached as a form of inquiry, students will also learn how to become better readers, thinkers, and learners.

In writing courses students will build fluency.  In other words, they will develop an effective writing process through which they learn to generate, focus, structure, and develop ideas into elaborated and extended texts that they can revise and edit better to meet readers’ needs and expectations.  Students will also learn to be reflective and critical about their own ideas and opinions but also about those they encounter from their reading, from other media, from their fellow classmates, and even from their teachers.  They will also learn that readers and writers bring their biases and assumptions to the texts they read and write as well.  In recognizing these inevitable biases, students will learn that writing and reading are simultaneously individual and social acts.

The above represent the general goals for writing courses.  In order to demonstrate student achievement of these overall goals, we provide below specific measurable outcomes that can be publicly assessed.

II.  Measurable Outcomes
For all writing courses satisfying category A.1, students will demonstrate that they have achieved competency in the following course outcomes through writing full-length essays and shorter assignments totaling approximately 8,000 words.

A.   Content

• Topic and purpose are clear.
• The essay is focused.
• The essay responds to all aspects of the assignment.
• Claims are supported with appropriate reasons and evidence.
• Supporting details are relevant and necessary.
• Information provided is accurate and consistent with the original sources.


B.   Organization
 

•  The essay is coherent.
• Ideas and support are presented in an order appropriate for the writer’s purpose.
• All parts of the essay relate to the overarching focus and purpose.
• Transitional devices of some kind guide readers through the text.
• Important ideas are given appropriate emphasis.
• The ending brings the essay to closure by summing up, restating, commenting, evaluating, or by some other appropriate method.


C.   Reasoning
 

• The significance of the topic is clear.
• When appropriate, assumptions are recognized and made explicit.
• Analysis is logical, consistent, and well-developed.
• Any visual material is integrated with the analysis.
• Conclusions follow logically from claims and the evidence presented.


D.   Rhetoric
 

• The genre is appropriate for the task and for the writer’s purpose.
• The form of the essay is appropriate for the writer’s purpose.
• The writer demonstrates awareness of audience.
• The writer acknowledges, respects, and represents accurately other points of view.
• Tone and voice are appropriate for the topic, task, and audience.


E.   Conventions
 

• The writing demonstrates control of sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics; errors will not impede meaning to any significant degree nor affect the reader’s view of the credibility of the writer.
• Sources are appropriately cited and identified according to conventional formats, such as MLA, APA, and the Chicago Manual of Style.

IV.  Means of Assessment
Besides the instructor’s professional assessment, there are various possibilities for measuring students’ achievement across these Category A.1 courses.  Because program-wide assessment extends beyond the normal instructional duties for composition courses, any such assessment is contingent upon additional funding.  Three possibilities for program-wide assessment are listed below:

A.  A random sample of writing assignments throughout the Composition Program.  A percentage of instructors randomly selected in any given semester will be asked to submit samples of student writing they have graded using the outcomes listed above in Section II.

B.  A portfolio consisting of two out-of-class essays complete with drafts.  One will be an informed argument, the other an expository essay wherein the writer makes and amplifies significant points and claims.  The portfolio will also include a piece of timed writing responding to a the prompt that elicits an analysis or an argument about a significant topic.  The portfolio should also be introduced with a letter explaining the contents, the assignments, process the writer went through in composing the essays, and a self-evaluation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each.  The letter should conclude with a statement concerning what areas the writer will continue to work on. Portfolios will be read by at least two readers based on a rubric reflecting the outcomes.  In cases where the two readers disagree, a third reader will adjudicate the score.

C.  A midterm and/or end of semester essay scored by at least two readers and by a third in case of discrepancies.

V.  Extending Skills beyond the Foundation Course
Other GE courses should extend the work begun in Foundation courses by requiring writing of some kind from students at least once during the semester.  Instructors should make sure students are allowed sufficient time to engage in an effective writing process of drafting, revising, and editing.  Instructors might provide some classroom time for peer review of drafts and for peer editing and should insist that final drafts be appropriately formatted and well edited.

Instructors should also require some in class extended writing at least twice during the semester and help students prepare appropriate materials and develop strategies for successfully completing such in-class assignments.

The Composition Program and the Writer’s Resource Lab can provide assistance to instructors by helping faculty design effective writing assignments, rubrics, and peer response sheets. Assistance can also be provided by training faculty to respond effectively to drafts of student writing and by offering suggestions for writing activities and assignments that can help students not only learn more deeply and communicate more effectively the subject matte of the course but can help them learn the discourse conventions specific to a given discipline.

VI. Final Note
These outcomes and their assessment will be subject to continual examination.  Our writing courses must adapt to shifts in the forms of literacy required for active participation in the wider culture and respond to the needs of a changing student population.  As the structure and content of our writing courses change, so must our outcomes and the means of assessing those outcomes.  In this sense, our Foundation courses will continue to evolve.
 

Category A.2 – Oral Communication

All GE A.2 Oral Communication courses provide instruction in and evaluation of all of the following:
 

• How to appropriately and strategically structure and organize messages (verbal and nonverbal symbols that have meaning) for ease of audience comprehension.
• How to distinguish among the cognitive, affective, and aesthetic content of messages (the levels at which meaning is conveyed).
• How to deliver verbal and nonverbal messages effectively (the competent integration of content/knowledge with performance/enactment).
• How to utilize visual, aural, and media aids appropriately.
• How to analyze and adapt messages to specific audiences (audience analysis) and for specific contexts and occasions.
• How to solicit receiver or audience feedback to check the accuracy and interpretation of messages.
• How to engage in speaker self-assessment for the purpose of improving oral communication skills.
• How to listen actively and analytically as a  receiver or audience.
• How to avoid unethical, non-credible communication practices (what should or should not be done).
• How to reduce students’ communication apprehension and enhance students communicator confidence.

Since oral communication encompasses the construction and delivery of messages from a speaker to a specific receiver or audience, these elements (speaker, message, delivery, audience) define the oral communication situation and the expectations that drive the assessment of oral communication proficiency.  Therefore, each oral communication course emphasizes the incremental development of oral communication skills; provides a minimum of 4 (and typically 6) demonstrations of oral communication proficiency; and provides an end-of-the-semester assignment that assesses a student’s competence in integrating oral communication skills.

Course components designed to develop oral communication skills should highlight a speaker’s construction and delivery of a message to a specific receiver or audience.  Active listening and audience/receiver analysis and adaptation are critical elements that should accompany any speaking assignment; and the most important measure of effectiveness should be the audience’s comprehension of the message/ideas presented.  Those instructors who wish to provide students with continuing oral communication opportunities for skills development in GE classes should provide students with a minimum of one graded assignment or structured in-class activity grounded in speaking (and listening) and demonstrating proficiency in oral communication skills.  The assignment or activity should be a public speech, debate, interview, oral reading and interpretation, group panel presentation, structured dyadic interaction, research paper presentation, or leading a discussion.  This assignment can also be used in conjunction with research requirements, writing and outlining, and/or critical thinking elements.  Talking in class, participating in class discussions, and/or conversing with an instructor or peers are certainly encouraged but should not be taken as appropriate substitutes for structured, graded oral communication assignments.

Category A3 – CRITICAL THINKING
OPERATIONAL CRITERIA

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based.

Abilities of the ideal critical thinker:

(The first five items involve clarification.)
1.  to identify the focus: the issue, question, or conclusion
2.  to analyze arguments
3   to ask and answer questions of clarification and/or challenge
4.  to define terms, judge definitions, and deal with equivocation
5.  to identify unstated assumptions
(The next two involve the basis for the decision.)
6. to judge the credibility of a source
7. to evaluate, and judge evaluation reports.
 (The next three involve inference.)
 8. to deduce, and judge deductions
 9. to induce, and judge inductions

a. to generalizations
b. to explanatory conclusions (including hypotheses)

10. to make and judge value judgements
(The next two are metacognitive abilities—involving supposition and integration.)
11. to consider and reason from premises, reasons, assumptions, positions, and other propositions       with which one disagrees or about which one is in doubt—without letting the disagreement or       doubt interfere with one’s thinking (“suppositional thinking”)
12. to integrate the other abilities and dispositions in making and defending a decision
(The next four are auxiliary critical thinking abilities—having them is not constitutive of being a critical thinker.)
13. to proceed in an orderly manner appropriate to the situation, for example,

a. to follow problem solving steps
b. to monitor one’s own thinking
c. to employ a reasonable critical thinking checklist

14. to be sensitive to the feelings, level of knowledge, and degree of sophistication of others
15. to employ appropriate rhetorical strategies in discussion and presentation (orally and in writing)
16. to employ and react to “fallacy” labels in an appropriate manner
 

Design your instructional strategies around ACTION VERBS

Teaching for Analytical Thinking encourages students to:

ANALYZE

- a literary plot, a theory in the sciences, a math problem, a political or historical issue

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

- two characters in a novel, two systems of government, two hypotheses

EVALUATE

- a letter to the editor, a poem, a social custom, a strategy in tennis

EXPLAIN

- the choice of words in an ad, a solution to a scientific problem, imagery in fiction

Teaching for Creative Thinking encourages students to:

CREATE

- a poem, a scientific investigation, a system of government for the classroom

DESIGN

-a new means of transportation, a new game, an ergonomical home

IMAGINE

- what life would be like in another country or another time, how bacteria come to infect us

SUPPOSE

-worldwide temperatures increased 5 degrees, people were paid to spy on neighbors

Teaching for Practical Thinking encourages students to:

USE

- a lesson that a literary character learned in his/her life, a mathematical lesson in a grocery store, a lesson learned on the playing field in everyday life

APPLY

- what students learned in a foreign language class to an interaction with a foreigner, a lesson from history in the present, a scientific principle to everyday life

IMPLEMENT

- a plan for starting a business, an idea for fund-raising, a scheme for increasing  student participation in school government

Category B2 –  Quantitative Reasoning

    The mathematical content of courses satisfying the quantitative reasoning general education requirement will vary considerably and will reflect the intended audience for the course as well as the level of preparation of the student.  All courses satisfying the general education requirement in quantitative reasoning require, as minimum prerequisite, demonstration of competence in mathematics equivalent to two years of high school algebra and high school geometry.  This requirement can be met by a satisfactory score on the Entry Level Mathematics exam, an equivalent exempting score on another exam, or credit in MATH 010.
    While it is expected that these courses will differ in content, it is also expected that the following common elements will appear in all courses meeting the quantitative reasoning requirement.

1. Foremost, since the category is quantitative reasoning, a course should enhance the student’s sense of number. This means, among other things, that when a student is exposed to a piece of quantitative data, be it in either numerical, graphical or geometrical representation, the student should develop enough intuitive insight on what that data represents and what its meaning is.

2. The course should also enhance the student’s ability to model reality by quantitative methods, be they mathematical or statistical. The ability to model requires several ingredients:
…….. The skill to translate real world situations into mathematical language and symbolism.
…….. The skill of mathematical manipulation and computation in order to solve the posed problem.
…….. The skill to interpret the mathematical results back into the real world situation.

3. Finally, the course should enhance to some degree the student’s appreciation of mathematical sciences, their proper place in culture and history, and their omnipresence in modern civilization.

Developing quantitative reasoning skills in courses beyond the Foundation:

 Course components designed to develop mathematical and/or quantitative reasoning will vary by discipline, but will emphasize the application of quantitative methods to problems in the discipline.  Examples include numerical problem solving, including multi-step problems, developing mathematical models to describe phenomena in various fields, quantitative measurements, graphical display and statistical analysis of data, analysis of spatial attributes including shape and symmetry, and estimation.  While it is entirely appropriate to incorporate the use of technological tools (specialized software, graphing calculators, etc.), the emphasis should be on technology as a tool for understanding underlying concepts.