Learning Objectives for Citizenship Courses
Learning Outcomes for Students
- Students will employ critical thinking skills (analysis, synthesis) to learn the meaning of informed, conscientious action; they will learn to integrate general and disciplinary knowledge with experiential knowledge, gained through direct contact with individuals and groups in the wider community. (Citizenship is a capstone rubric because the aim is to model“transferable knowledge,”knowledge in action, knowledge in practical application).
This objective furthers the following objectives of integrated studies:
- ILA—“Development of analytical thinking skills.”
- GP—“The understanding that problems, issues, ideas, and actions cannot be considered from only a national viewpoint or from a political cultural or historic vacuum.”
- GP—“Help students understand the influence and importance of cultural differences.”
- RFL—“Have an aspect of active learning…..”
- Students will engage in open-minded inquiry and develop strategies for ethical decision making and problem solving.
This objective furthers the following objectives of integrated studies:
- ILA—“Development of analytical thinking skills.”
- GP—“Teach students to become more informed and interested global citizens.”
- RFL—“Learn how our society and other societies past and present have struggled to formulate ethical and moral frameworks, to understand and represent their place in the cosmos, and to grapple with the realities of human existence, including joy, death, pain, suffering, and evil.”
- RFL—“Critically evaluate how these fundamental questions can, do, or should affect the manner in which we choose to live our lives, interact with others and live in the world.”
- Students will develop awareness and understanding that concrete localized problems calling for conscientious action are often embedded in complex, historical, economic, political, social and cultural contexts.
This objective furthers the following objectives of integrated studies:
- GP—“Students will understand that events, problems, or decisions cannot be considered from only a national viewpoint or from a political, cultural or historic vacuum.”
- RFL—“Courses should avoid a mono-vocal or single worldview approach.”
- Students will develop skills of interpersonal and empathetic communication; also habits of self-reflection, and self-analysis as those activitiesestablish the basis forconscientious action.
This objective furthers the following objectives of integrated studies:
- ILA—“Development of speaking and listening skills.”
- RFL—“Students will individually reflect on the material, its intellectual and spiritual implications for their lives and their communities.”
- Students will develop an understanding of the importance of individual social responsibility-- that the combined efforts of individuals can and do make a difference.
- Students will learn to distinguish the possibilities and limitations of social change; students will further reflect on the ways various forms of civic engagement may work at local, regional, national or international levels.
This objective furthers the following objectives of integrated studies:
- GP—“The ability to appreciate the global nature of local problems, issues, ideas, and actions, and the local-global articulation.”
- GP—“The understanding that problems, issues, ideas, and actions cannot be considered from only a national viewpoint or from a political, cultural or historic vacuum.”
- GP—“The realization that nearly every phenomenon has worldwide advantages and disadvantages, winners and losers, cures and side effects, profits and losses; sometimes the net yield is progress and other times, decline.”
Rubric Requirements and Options: A Guide to Course Development within the Rubric
- Courses in the rubric will share short reading(s) that introduce, define, and contextualize the idea of “Citizenship.”
- Readings, discussion, and research in rubric courses must address the pertinence of economic, political, social, and cultural contexts within which problems and projects are defined.
- Courses in the rubric will draw upon texts and materials that represent scholarship relevant in description ofthose contexts, andof problems and their possible solutions.
- Courses in the rubric must include collaborative work and teamwork.
- Courses in the rubric must address as academic components of the course both preparation for and evaluation of designed experience and action.
- Course syllabi in the rubric must give evidence ofsubstantive reading and writing assignments.
- Courses in the rubric are descriptively “multi-disciplinary,” meaning that a citizen’s informed, conscientious action requires more than one disciplinary perspective or approach.
- Courses in the rubric should address questions that encourage students to make explicit links to prior courses in general education, IS, and their majors.
- Courses in the rubric will feature a major project; possibilities include but are not limited to: public presentation (individual or group), a long paper (individual or collaborative work), policy proposals, service learning evaluations, etc.
- Courses in the rubric must reinforce and expand upon the learning objectives of ILA, GP and RFL.