GENERAL EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF STUDENT MOBILITY

Leadership Is Essential

by Ron Williams

Our institution is in the process of doing what Robert Shoenberg says needs to be done. Starting with general education and expanding to all courses, we are determining what the core content should be and how we should assess student learning of that content. In short, we are engaged in articulation. Because of our assessment program, we can, with assurance, tell receiving institutions what outcomes are expected from our courses.

At the state level, Maryland's two- and four-year college and university faculty have jointly developed a scoring system for determining what constitutes a "C" paper in English, and similar work is going on in other disciplines. The purpose is to standardize the course content and assessment of student performance so that they are comparable from institution to institution within the state. These statewide efforts do not rely on credit hours; they rely on outcomes. The voluntary standardization of these general education courses gives meaning to credit hours.

Yet another cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary faculty group was charged by the statewide council of two- and four-year Chief Academic Officers to develop an articulated undergraduate teacher preparation program. As a result, an outcome-based model for the first two years has been developed. At the end of this process, the colleges in the state of Maryland will arrive at a system-wide agreement about intended outcomes.

Essential in this process of building outcomes-based articulation has been the state and institutional leadership. Faculty are ready to engage in intellectual discourse focused on outcomes, we've learned, but only when provided administrative support and leadership. The challenge lies in assembling cross-institutional disciplinary faculty groups and providing a clearly defined charge. Institutions have to empower these faculty to become effective advocates for change in their departments.

Contrary to Shoenberg's statement, general education programs with distinct character are not necessarily deterrents to effective articulation and transfer. At our institution we are developing interconnections among the general education courses and creating a program with a unique character, but this will in no way diminish the transferability of the program to senior institutions. It will, however, give a meaningful answer to the question, "Why do I have to take this course?"