General Education Assessment
The General Education Board involves faculty from across campus to establish and refine student learning outcomes, assure that the curriculum provides opportunities for students to acquire them, assess evidence of learning, and make changes where appropriate.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of general education courses, students will have intellectual and practical skills. These skills will be practiced extensively across the general education curriculum and include:
- Written Communication: Develop and express ideas in writing, learning to work in many genres and styles, and with many different writing technologies, and mixing texts, data, and images.
- Quantitative Reasoning: Apply numeric, symbolic and geometric skills to formulate and solve quantitative problems.
- Inquiry & Analysis: Explore issues, objects or works through the collection and analysis of evidence that results in informed conclusions or judgments and break complex topics or issues into parts to gain a better understanding of them.
- Oral communication: Prepare purposeful presentations designed to increase knowledge, to foster understanding, or to promote change in the listeners' attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors.
- Critical Thinking: Comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion.
- Creative Thinking: Combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.
- Information Literacy: Know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand.
- Technical literacy: Use, manage, understand, and assess technology.
- Problem solving: Design, evaluate and implement a strategy to answer an open-ended question or achieve a desired goal.
- Teamwork: Belong to teams where effort, manner of interacting with others, and the quantity and quality of contributions are valued.
Assessment Plan and Annual Reports
Specific Assessments
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VALUE Rubric Assessment of Outcomes
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Critical Thinking Assessment Test
General Education Board (Recommends to Senate)
Board Activities:
The General Education Board is engaging in a number of activities related to assessment, and more are planned for the upcoming Academic year. The following are highlights of past and current activities:
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2022-2023
- Scored artifacts for Inquiry & Analysis
- Discussed potential Gen Ed microcredentials
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2021-2022
- Approved general education assessment plan and methods
- Finished recertification of GT Pathways courses
- Scored artifacts for Written Communication and Quantitative Reasoning SLOs using VALUE rubrics
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2020-2021
- Developed assessment details for revised general education SLOs
- Drafted revised general education assessment plan
- Recertified GT Pathways courses for required categories
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2019-2020
- Developed revised general education SLOs for AY2021-22
- Drafted revised general education assessment plan and methods
- Administered electronic CAT Critical Thinking test
- Recertified GT Pathways courses for required categories
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2018-2019
- Reaffirmed general education SLOs
- Developed revised general education assessment plan and assessment methods
- Administered pilot electronic CAT Critical Thinking test
- Recertified GT Pathways courses for required categories
- Evaluated new course applications
- Worked with campus administration to begin planning for general education reform
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2017-2018
2017-2018
- Mapped CSU-Pueblo academic program SLOs to general education SLOs
- Clarified GenEd SLO language for syllabus template
- Recertified GT Pathways courses for required categories
- Evaluated new course applications
- Implemented updated mathematics substitution process
- Campus discussion of Gen Ed instructor successes and challenges (Gen Ed tea)
- Piloted a survey of gen ed instructors
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2016-2017
- Mapped institutional general education SLOs to GT Pathways SLOs
- Mapped GT Pathways competencies to content areas
- Created general education syllabus template
- Created general education course GT Pathways recertification and initial application forms and workflow.
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2015-2016
- Reviewed Proficiency Profile Results
- Scored wellness essays
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2014-2015
- Administered the Proficiency Profile and a locally developed essay to incoming first-year students and seniors.
- Published template Gen Ed syllabus
- January 7, 2015: Convocation week workshop for all Gen Ed instructors including a presentation and discussion of topics that should be addressed in all Gen Ed syllabi.
- Reviewed Gen Ed website for completeness
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2013-2014
- General Education Board announced its theme for the year, Thinking Beyond Green: Addressing Sustainability through General Education.
- October 22, 2013: Campus workshop conducted by Sarah Spencer on ways to incorporate sustainability themes into general education classes.
- Fall 2013: Gen Ed Board administered CAT Critical Thinking Assessment to Freshman and Seniors
- November 15, 2013: Gen Ed Board conducts CAT scoring workshops in which CSU-Pueblo faculty members scored CAT tests.
- February 5, 2014: Sustainability workshop featuring Jane Fraser and Marc Pratarelli was held. At the end of the workshop, the attendees discussed having some small reading groups based on Brian Dunbar's book, which was made available to faculty during a workshop held in the fall.
- February 12, 2014: Faculty member from UCCS met with Gen Ed Board to describe recent redesign of their Gen Ed program.
- March 7, 2014: Gen Ed Board held campus forum to present CAT results.
- March 31, 2014: Gen Ed Board conducted comprehensive Gen Ed course syllabus review.
- Spring 2014: NSSE administered.
