GE Oral Communication Assessment Project
With Executive Order #595 dated November 1992 oral communication became a requirement in the CSU General Education - Breadth Requirements. At CSU Chico, Oral communications is part of the GE Core, Area A-1 (See EM 99-05.) Students may fulfill the oral communication requirement with one of two courses: CMST131 Speech Communication Fundamentals or CMST132 Small Group Communication. Both courses are housed in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences, Communication Studies Program. The framework for instruction differs in the two classes. In the CMST131 class a professor provides one lecture per week in a large class setting. This professor is also the coordinator/supervisor for the graduate teaching assistants who conduct the balance of weekly class meetings for CMST131 in sections of approximately 25 students. Each teaching assistant is responsible for teaching from one to three sections of the class. In contrast, CMST132 is taught predominantly by experienced part-time faculty although a few sections are taught by full-time tenured or tenure/track faculty. There is a coordinator of the small group classes to ensure uniformity of instruction. In both CMST131 and CMST132 the syllabi are consistent overall as is the curriculum across sections, though there is some variation in class activities.
In addition to fulfilling Oral Communications requirements in Area A-1, EM 99-05 specifies that "[i]n every course, relevant skills of the Core must be applied as essential to the process of mastering content and making applications." This objective is further reinforced in the capstone requirement, which dictates that "[t]hemes will incorporate, build upon, and nurture skills from Area A..."