The General Education Program teaches the knowledge and skills you need to intelligently participate in public discourse.

Knowledge Outcomes

Graduates know:

1. about the major areas of human investigation and accomplishment — the arts, the humanities, the mathematical sciences, the natural sciences, and the social sciences.
2. about their own culture and the culture of others.
3. how academic study connects to issues in the world.

Skills Outcomes

Graduates are proficient in:

1. Collaboration: Effectively work on a team.
   • Helps the team move forward by articulating the merits of alternative ideas or proposals.
   • Engages team members in ways that facilitate their contributions to meetings by both constructively building upon or synthesizing the contributions of others as well as noticing when someone is not participating and inviting them to engage.
   • Completes all assigned tasks by the deadline; work accomplished is thorough, comprehensive, and advances the project; proactively helps other team members complete their assigned tasks.
   • Actively promotes a constructive team climate.
      
2. Critical thinking: Comprehensively evaluate issues, ideas, artifacts, or events before forming a conclusion.
   • States an issue clearly and describes it comprehensively.
   • Uses appropriate evidence that includes relevant context(s), which facilitates a comprehensive analysis or synthesis of the issue.
   • Develops a position that thoroughly takes into account the complexities of an issue, limits of the position, and synthesizes others’ points of view.
   • Develops conclusions, implications, and consequences that are logical and reflect an informed evaluation based on strength of evidence.
      
3. Ethical reasoning: Apply ethical principles and codes of conduct to decision making.
   • Recognizes ethical issues when presented in a complex, multilayered (gray) context and can recognize interrelationships among the issues.
   • Names the major ethical theory or theories used, presents the gist of said theory or theories, and thoroughly and accurately explains the details of the theory or theories used.
   • Applies ethical theories to a complex issue accurately and considers the full implications of the application.
   • States a position in-depth and effectively defends against other ethical perspectives.
      
4. Information literacy: Identify the need for information; access, evaluate, and use information effectively, ethically, and legally.
   • Defines the scope of the research question or thesis with clarity and appropriate depth.
   • Accesses information by using effective, well-designed search strategies and the most relevant research tools.
   • Chooses a variety of quality sources appropriate to the scope and discipline of the research question, incorporating seminal works and essential theorists/thinkers by using multiple evaluative criteria.
   • Organizes and synthesizes information from sources to fully achieve the intended purpose, with clarity and depth.
   • Completely and accurately cites all information sources used by appropriately paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting.
      
5. Integration: Apply knowledge from experiences and multiple disciplines to new, complex situations.
   • Connects examples, facts, or theories from multiple disciplines and applies them to new, complex situations.
      
6. Oral communication: Effectively prepare and deliver a formal oral presentation.
   • States a thesis that is compelling, precisely stated, appropriately repeated, and strongly linked to the supporting material.
   • Organizes the presentation in a clear, consistent, and cohesive manner.
   • Uses language that is imaginative, memorable, compelling, appropriate for the audience, and enhances the effectiveness of the presentation.
   • Uses delivery techniques that make the presentation compelling and the speaker appears polished and confident.
   • Uses a variety of supporting materials that significantly enhances the presentation.
      
7. Problem solving: Design and evaluate an approach to answer an open-ended question or achieve a desired goal.
   • Constructs a clear and insightful problem statement that includes all relevant contextual factors.
   • Identifies multiple approaches for solving the problem that applies to a specific context.
   • Proposes one or more solutions/hypotheses that are sensitive to contextual factors and the ethical, logical, and cultural dimensions of the problem.
   • Evaluates solution(s) thoroughly and insightfully and does all of the following: considers the history of the problem, reviews logic/reasoning, examines feasibility of the solution, and weighs impacts of the solution.
      
8. Quantitative Literacy: Work effectively with numerical data.
   • Calculations are correct, solve the problem, and are presented clearly and concisely.
   • Skillfully converts data into an insightful mathematical portrayal in a way that contributes to a deeper understanding.
   • Uses the quantitative analysis of data as the basis for deep and thoughtful judgments, drawing insightful, carefully qualified conclusions.
   • Uses quantitative information in connection with the purpose of the work, presents it in an effective format, and explains it with consistently high quality.
      
9. Written communication: Write effectively for multiple purposes and audiences.
   • Develops relevant and compelling content that is appropriate for the intended audience and purpose and illustrates the writer’s mastery of the subject.
   • Successfully follows and executes a wide range of writing practices particular to a specific discipline, audience, purpose, and writing task.
   • Skillfully integrates high-quality, credible, relevant sources that are appropriate for the discipline, audience, purpose, and writing task to develop the writer’s own ideas.
   • Uses language that skillfully communicates meaning to readers with clarity and fluency; consistently follows appropriate grammatical conventions.

For more information on the Student Learning Outcomes and to view the rubrics associated with each outcome, please visit our website at: https://www.gvsu.edu/gened/

Please note: Skills SLOs were revised June 21, 2019, after the Handbook was published.