An institution develops a set of guidelines and checklists to guide the development of General Education (GE) courses during the course development process.
Purpose
The purpose of this practice is to provide clear guidance for teaching staff to develop GE courses that meet the institution’s educational goals and mission. The guidelines set out the requirements for the design and implementation of GE courses which include (i) the objectives, expectations and desired characteristics of an institution’s GE (examples of desired characteristics); (ii) the non-discipline-specific contents and GE-specific learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and the associated assessments, course registration restrictions, reading requirement in written assignments; and (iii) the approaches and institution-wide policies to coordinate and monitor the quality delivery of a GE course. Review checklists (sample checklist) are also provided which serve as a self-evaluation tool to help assess whether the curriculum of the proposed and/or revised course has met the institution’s GE requirements.
Outcome
The outcome of employing this practice is a clearer educational rationale and a more rigorous approach to the design and review of the GE curriculum.