Why Have General Education Program Level Assessment?
General Education is more than a collection of courses; it is an academic program. Like all academic programs, GE needs to be periodically reviewed to ensure that it is current, meeting its goals, efficient, and contributing to rigorous student learning. A major goal of GE revision at Chico State was to create a General Education program with clearly articulated student learning outcomes (SLOs) that can serve as a means of programmatic assessment, as well as to create an institutional structure – through Pathway coordinators and CAB – that can lead assessment efforts. CAB has created an assessment schedule (PDF) to guide assessment of the Pathways program over the next five years.
Background on Chico’s Approach to GE Program Level Assessment.
In AY 2008-09, the General Education Advisory Committee convened a Faculty Learning Community (funded by the CSU, Chancellors Office) who did initial thinking on GE assessment in this report. In October 2011, a team of Chico State faculty and the Dean of Undergraduate Education participated in a CSU system-wide conference on GE assessment and produced a working plan for GE assessment. We hope to build on this work in implementing GE program-level assessment of the new GE Pathways program.
A concerted effort at GE Program assessment was carried out in AY 04-05 and 05-06, prior to the major revision of GE on our campus. This assessment was rather ad hoc and strained due to the lack of clearly articulated SLOs in our old program. But these assessment results proved important for building a culture of evidence that informed re-design efforts. The reports of these efforts were widely shared with the campus at that time and are available at the links below.
GE Program Five-year Program Review 2017-2018
GE Program SLO Assessment Reports, 2012-2017
- Creativity 2014-2015 (PDF)
- Critical Thinking 2012-2013 (PDF)
- Critical Thinking 2015-2016 (PDF)
- Diversity 2013-2014 (PDF)
- Global Engagement 2016-2017 (PDF)
- Information Literacy 2014-2015 (PDF)
- Mathematical Reasoning 2014-2015 (PDF)
- Oral Communication 2013-2014 (PDF)
- Personal and Social Responsibility 2014-2015 (PDF)
- Sustainability 2017 (PDF)
- Written Communication 2012-2013 (PDF)
- Written Communication 2016-2017 (PDF)
GE Program SLO Assessment Reports, 2004 – 2006
- Writing, Oral Communications and Quantitative Reasoning (PDF)
- GEAC “Meta-Analysis” of Assessment Reports and Faculty Perceptions (PDF)
- GE Core SLOs (PDF)
