What is "General Education"?
A college’s general education curriculum is the set of experiences and competencies we expect students to have and develop regardless of major. Such courses and course types are required for graduation, again, regardless of the major. (Students complete additional courses or experiences in their undergraduate majors, minors, or certificate programs.). General education usually refers to undergraduate education, which usually is more comprehensive in orientation than graduate and professional education.
- Assessing General Education Learning Outcomes (AAC&U)
(LINK) - GWU Guide to General Education Assessment (LINK)
- Beauchman, M., & Waldenberger, S. (2017, September). Assessing general education: Identifying outcomes, data analysis, and improvements. (Assessment in Practice). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). (LINK)
- Miller, R., & Leskes, A. (2005). Levels of assessment. Association of American Colleges and Universities. (LINK)
- Capsim blog post: The Five Levels of Assessment in Higher Education (LINK)
- Millet, I., & Weinstein, S. (2015). Grading by objectives: A matrix method for course assessment. Quality Approaches in Higher Education, 6(2), 3-19. (LINK)
Assessment of Duke's General Education
The undergraduate curriculum in the Pratt School of Engineering includes pre- and co-requisites supporting Engineering courses as well as breadth requirement outside of Engineering (e.g., the Social Sciences).
Trinity College’s curriculum is in transition. In April 2024, the Arts & Sciences Council approved a proposal for a new general education curriculum for students in Trinity College to replace Curriculum 2000 in fall 2025.
Students matriculating fall 2025 and later will complete the requirements of the new curriculum. (The full curriculum proposal is online as well.). Students matriculating in prior terms will complete the requirements of the old curriculum (Curriculum 2000), including Areas of Knowledge and Modes of Inquiry.
In spring 2024, the Curriculum Implementation Committee charged the Director of University Assessment and the A&S Council Committee on Assessment, in cooperation with campus partners, with designing and implementing an assessment strategy for the new general education curriculum.
trinity's previous approach to the assessment of the general education
There are so many ways to experience Duke! Therefore, the variability of the Trinity College curriculum has required a flexible approach to general education assessment.
Point 1: Assessment usually occurs most authentically in the context of a course, degree program, or co-curricular learning experience. And we argue that Duke and other institutions should persist in promoting authentic, embedded assessment in their courses and programs.
Point 2: We also need to collect and align evidence across these experiences to judge whether Trinity graduates meet our learning expectations for various domains of the liberal education.
Studying the general education from 2011 through 2023
In the recent past, the College assessed the general education through a canon of normed tests issued to first- and fourth-year students. The tests explored critical thinking, intercultural engagement and understanding, and ethical reasoning. That project started in summer 2010 and continued annually through 2023. The student sample was voluntary -- incoming first year (non-transfer) students, A&S and Engineering. To reduce students' assessment responsibilities, each matriculating cohort was divided into four roughly equal subgroups, where each subgroup received the invitation to one of the four instruments in use in Trinity College.
Data collection for matriculating students began each May, with periodic reminders in July and August, ending at the start of first year student orientation. Graduating seniors received their task invitations in February-April of their graduating year. These graduates were invited to take the same test as in their first year to enable repeated measurement. This approach allowed Trinity College to gather baseline data pertaining to incoming students’ levels of ethical reasoning, global perspectives, critical thinking, and quantitative literacy and reasoning and to follow the development of student competencies, broadly defined, over time. When samples are large enough, aggregated and de-identified findings are shared with individual A&S departments and programs to help supplement the localized assessment activities underway within those programs.
The tests in use in Trinity College included:
- The California Critical Thinking Skills Test
- The Defining Issues Test (DIT-2)
- The Global Perspectives Inventory
- The Quantitative Literacy and Reasoning Assessment
The findings from these tests, coupled with insights from assessment work at the department and program level and analyses of key student success metrics and performance indicators, formed the basis of our general education assessment design.
Duke's regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACSCOC), expects institutions to document and communicate how it maintains regularized and rigorous assessment processes for the General Education. For more information, see Section 8.2.b. of the 2018 Principles of Accreditation Resource Manual