Why are we Assessing General Education at NC State?

by Mike Carter,
Associate Professor of English, NCSU

When we think of general education at NC State, we think of the General Education Requirements (GERs), the extensive list of courses in different academic categories that outlines our collective sense of a general education for all students. But general education is not just a list of various required courses; it is an experience that shapes our students, offering them a wider comprehension of their lives and a solid foundation for being an effective citizen and professional in a diverse and changing world. General education is one of the key defining experiences of an education at NC State.

It is precisely because general education plays such an important role at our university that it must be assessed. This was clear in the original discussions that founded the present GERs and remains clear today. Assessment is critical in providing a way to determine how well the general education program is achieving its aims and also how to improve the program so that it can better meet those aims. But it is also clear that such a large program that includes so many departments represents a challenge for meaningful assessment, one that will attain both of the goals of assessing the program.

The Council for Undergraduate Education (CUE) has taken up that challenge and created a viable plan for assessing the GERs. The plan involves both the CUE, which is the administrative body that oversees and is responsible for evaluating the GERs, and faculty teaching GER courses. Without the involvement of the former, the assessment would lack the necessary broad vision of the general education program as a whole. And without the involvement of the latter, the assessment would lack any meaningful way of improving the general education experience of students in GER classes.

Thus, GER assessment takes place on two levels. The CUE has created a set of general GER objectives outlining certain kinds of learning that define each of the GER academic categories. The faculty teaching GER courses will generate learning outcomes for their courses, outcomes that enable students in their classes to meet the objectives for the appropriate GER category. Faculty will then assess their courses as GER courses, in terms of their students' ability to meet the GER objectives, and report the findings of their assessment and any changes they will make in the course to improve students' learning.

The chief advantage of this two-pronged approach is that it provides the means of both assessing the GERs as a whole and improving individual GER courses. There are other advantages for faculty accruing from GER objectives. One is that they ensure a greater consistency across courses within a GER category; academic advisors can be sure that any course their students take in a particular category will share certain basic objectives. Another advantage is that the objectives provide the criteria faculty must use to propose a course for a GER category; previously the standards for inclusion in (or exclusion from) GER categories have been obscure. Now, faculty know precisely what they must do on course action forms: demonstrate that their proposed courses contain learning outcomes and assessment instruments that are specifically aligned to all the GER objectives in the appropriate category.