Assessment of General Education

In 2004, the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, a group formed in 2003 to define how the campus will improve undergraduate education and increase faculty involvement in undergraduate instruction, submitted its final report. In that report, the group suggested reconsideration of “the structure of existing majors and breadth requirements to accommodate greater flexibility and a broader scope of student’s interests.” This reconsideration took the form of May 2007 document entitled “Revised CEP Plan for General Education.” In this revised plan, the campus’ Council on Educational Policy in collaboration with the entire campus essentially reformed general education at UCI.

The revised plan changed the general education program in five major ways, one of the most significant being the intent to focus on student learning and learning outcomes. In Spring of 2009, the Council on Educational Policy approved learning outcomes for general education in the following areas:

• Writing:
  • After completion of the general education requirement for lower-division writing, successful students should be able to demonstrate rhetorically effective, accurate academic writing and communication across a variety of contexts, purposes, audiences, and media using appropriate stance, genre, style, and organization; develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading texts; develop abilities in critical reading across a variety of genres and media; and demonstrate information literacy skills by locating, evaluating, and integrating information gathered from multiple sources into a research project.
  • After completion of the general education requirement for upper-division writing, successful students should be able to demonstrate rhetorically effective, discipline-specific writing for appropriate academic, professional, and public audiences; demonstrate, at an advanced level of competence, use of discipline-specific research methods, genres, modes of development, and formal conventions; and demonstrate advanced information literacy skills by locating, evaluating, and integrating information gathered from multiple sources into discipline-specific writing.
• Science and Technology: After completion of the general education requirement for science and technology, successful students should be able to demonstrate a broad understanding of the fundamental laws of science, the principles underlying the design and operation of technology, and the interrelations among science and technology disciplines; demonstrate a broad understanding of various natural phenomena that surround and influence our lives; describe how scientists approach and solve problems; solve problems and draw conclusions based on scientific information and models, using critical thinking and qualitative and quantitative analysis of data and concepts; and explain the scope and limitations of scientific inquiry and the scientific method.
• Social and Behavioral Sciences: After completion of the general education requirement for social and behavioral sciences, successful students should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of principles, sources, and interpretations of human behavior and how people organize, govern, understand, and explain social life; demonstrate an understanding of contemporary and historical perspectives on human behavior; understand and explain the scientific methods used in the acquisition of knowledge and the testing of competing theories in the social and behavioral sciences; and critically evaluate methods, findings, and conclusions in the research literature on human behavior.
• Arts and Humanities: After completion of the general education requirement for arts and humanities, successful students should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how visual and verbal communication is used in literature and film, art and music, and philosophy and history; communicate an understanding and appreciation of diverse forms of cultural expression, past and present; understand and explain the research methods used in the acquisition of knowledge and the testing of competing theories in the arts and humanities; and think critically about how meaning is created and how experience is variously interpreted.
• Quantitative, Symbolic, and Computational Reasoning: After completion of the general education requirement for quantitative, symbolic, and computational reasoning, successful students should be able to demonstrate competency in quantitative, symbolic, and computational reasoning; and demonstrate an ability to solve real-world problems using quantitative, logical, or computational approaches that are typical of mathematical thinking.
• Language other than English: After completion of the general education requirement for language other than English, successful students should be able to demonstrate competency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening in a non-English language; demonstrate an understanding of another (non-English speaking) culture through its language; and demonstrate an understanding of one's own language through the investigation of another, non-English linguistic system.
• Multicultural Studies: After completion of the general education requirement for multicultural studies, successful students should be able to demonstrate knowledge of one or more historically underrepresented groups' culture, history, and development in California and the United States; demonstrate an awareness and appreciation of cultural differences and inequities; and demonstrate an understanding that cooperation and mutual understanding among all cultural groups is needed to interact successfully in a culturally diverse society.
• International/Global Issues: After completion of the general education requirement for international/global issues, successful students should be able to demonstrate specific knowledge of the cultural, historical, social, economic, scientific, and political aspects of one or more foreign countries, and the connections among these aspects; develop a broader understanding of the formation of different cultures and countries through the world; and be prepared to engage in positive interaction with peoples of different cultures and nationalities.
• Laboratory or Performance: After completion of the general education requirement for laboratory or performance, successful students should be able to describe the connections between theory and practice as demonstrated within the context of the student's own experiential learning; and demonstrate enhanced development in at least two of the following areas: professionalism, communication skills, technology, interpersonal skills, working on a team, leadership, and problem-solving.

Last Updated: 11/3/2009