Institutional Level Student Learning Outcomes, Rubrics, and Assessment Results

DEFINITION: Critical thinking is the ability to use information, ideas, and arguments from relevant perspectives to make sense of complex issues and solve problems. Critical thinking also includes locating, evaluating, interpreting, and combining information to reach well-reasoned conclusions or solutions. >After completing the General Education Program requirement, students will be able to:

1. Recognize connections and relationships among ideas, data, and information.
2. Identify assumptions by evaluating conflicting narratives and interpretations.
3. Demonstrate proficiency in problem-solving strategies and skills by determining a process and solutions to a real-world problem.
4. Construct arguments based on logical analysis of evidence and sound reasoning.
5. Evaluate their ideas and the ideas of others, including identifying biases and fallacies, both logical and rhetorical. 

View the Revised American Association of Colleges and Universities Critical Thinking Value Rubric 

DEFINITION: Written communication is defined as the ability to develop, convey, and exchange ideas in writing, as appropriate to a given context and audience. 

After completing the General Education Program requirement, students will be able to:  

1. Order sentences and paragraphs to communicate central points with logical connections and minimal grammar and punctuation errors.
2. Express ideas through the written word appropriate to a specific audience, purpose, rhetorical situation, and genre.
3. Write adhering to discipline-specific attribution standards, including in-text citation and reference.
4. Articulate ideas using logical support, including informed opinions and facts, and their interpretations to develop the students' ideas, avoiding fallacies, biased language, and inappropriate tone.

DEFINITION: Quantitative Reasoning is the ability to manipulate, analyze, and/or evaluate numbers and numerical data and use results to support conclusions. It may involve calculation and/or analysis and interpretation of quantitative information derived from existing databases or systematic observations. 

After completing the General Education Program requirement, students will be able to:  

1. Identify quantitative information encountered in daily life or within the discipline to make informed decisions. 
2. Explain numerical information orally or through written communication.
3. Interpret equations, graphs, diagrams, tables, figures, and/or words to draw relevant conclusions and make predictions.
4. Use technological tools to create graphs, tables, figures, and equations from numerical information.
5. Calculate basic mathematical operations in problem-solving, such as arithmetic, algebra, and basic statistics.

DEFINITION: Scientific Literacy is the ability to analyze and apply basic scientific principles and methods of scientific research and inquiry to make informed decisions and engage with issues related to the natural, physical, and social world.

After completing the General Education Program requirement, students will be able to: 

1. Identify the credibility and reliability of scientific sources by distinguishing among peer-reviewed articles, popular media, and pseudoscience.
2. Compare different scientific methods of analysis and investigate their use in evaluating empiric information.
3. Discuss ethical, legal, economic, social, cultural, and environmental implications of scientific research and practices.
4. Apply scientific reasoning skills to analyze and solve problems, interpret scientific data, draw conclusions, and make evidence-based decisions.

View the Virginia State University Scientific Literacy Rubric

DEFINITION: Global Cultural Literacy is a critical analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems and legacies (such as natural, physical, social, cultural, economic, and political) and their implications for people’s lives and the earth’s sustainability. Through global learning, students should 1) become informed, open-minded, and responsible people who are attentive to diversity across the spectrum of differences, 2) seek to understand how their actions affect both local and global communities, and 3) address the world’s most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively and equitably”, AAC&U.  

After completing the General Education Program requirement, students will be able to:  

1. Explain the impact of culture on one’s worldview and behavior, including assumptions, biases, prejudices, and stereotypes.
2. Discuss diverse perspectives on an ethical issue that has global implications.
3. Analyze relationships or connections between a cultural product or practice and the perspective of the society that produced it.
4. Develop a project within the global community that engages cultures other than their own.

DEFINITION: Civic engagement is defined as an array of knowledge, abilities, values, attitudes, and behaviors that in combination, allow individuals to contribute to the civic life of their communities. It may include, among other things, exploration of one’s role and responsibilities in society; knowledge of and ability to engage with political systems and processes; and/or course-based or extra-curricular efforts to identify and address issues of public or community concern, particularly as they address the African-American community. 

After completing the General Education Program requirement, students will be able to:  

1. Describe political systems and how they function.
2. Articulate their own civic identity and how one participates as an informed citizen in a democratic society.
3. Propose potential solutions to civic, social, environmental, historical, or economic challenges to meet community needs.
4. Evaluate the impacts of political or corporate policies on individuals, communities, and the environment.