General Education Learning Outcomes
The Learning Outcomes for General Education are listed below. Gen Ed learning outcomes were originally approved via EPC in March 2022 (see below). The following outcomes were adapted for the general education revision (approved by the faculty in December 2022) by the Core Curriculum Committee in consultation with the faculty. Please also see IHON (International Honors Program) Learning Outcomes and FYEP (First Year Experience Project) Learning Outcomes.
PLUS 100; Transition to PLU (1): Students will learn to identify and overcome unforeseen barriers in adjusting to college academic and social life.
After completing PLUS 100:
- Students will identify resources, develop strategies, and hone skills and capacities for college success.
- Students will explore community connections, academic support, and personal wellness within the context of the PLU values of diversity, justice, and sustainability (DJS).
FYEP 101; the Writing Seminar (4): Students will learn strategies for writing, thinking, speaking and reading. They encounter writing as a way of thinking, of learning, and of discovering and ordering ideas. Working with interdisciplinary themes, students practice the various academic conventions of writing.
After completing FYEP 101:
- Students will employ rhetorical strategies effective for a specific context, purpose, and audience.
- Students will articulate, develop, and support an argument, point of view, or position, effectively using evidence relevant to the context.
- Students will implement strategies for revising the content, structure, and organization of their ideas.
FYEP 102; the DJS Seminar (4): Students will engage with themes and questions related to Diversity, Justice, and Sustainability, and their intersections, via the methods and topics of a particular discipline or field of study.
After completing FYEP 102:
- Students will learn about diversity, justice, and sustainability, and their intersections, by
- critically reflecting on identity and the interconnections between all living beings;
- exploring human systems, ecological systems, and the relationship(s) between the two;
- examining power structures that shape the experiences of living beings;
- practicing active listening and effective communication skills across differences.
Creative Expression (4): Students will learn artistic processes and evaluate print, visual, and performing arts.
- Students will describe the various artistic skills and processes that contribute to a performance, production or product.
- Students will evaluate aesthetic qualities through analysis and judgment about works of art in a given medium.
Fitness and Wellness (2): Students will develop skills for lifelong physical and mental wellness.
PHED 100 (1)
- Students will understand the benefits of physical activity and active living.
- Students will identify the relationships between nutrition, stress management and physical activity on overall health and well-being.
Activity Courses (1)
- Students will learn the basic knowledge and skills necessary for successful participation in a particular physical activity.
- Students will demonstrate the awareness, knowledge, and behavioral skills necessary to support a lifelong commitment to movement and physical activity.
Interpreting Text (4): Students will learn to analyze text, examining both their constructions and the cultural, social, philosophical, and/or historical contexts from which they stem.
- Students will apply critical frameworks to the study of historical, artistic, literary, and/or cinematic texts.
- Students will analyze and explain how language and genre shape meaning in cultural and political contexts.
- Students will develop arguments by drawing on multiple perspectives and relevant evidence.
Exploring Values and Worldviews (4): Students will learn how beliefs and values inform action and shape how individuals and groups interpret reality and human experience.
- Students will understand and explain how individuals, groups, and communities experience and interpret the world.
- Students will identify and examine the beliefs and values that inform their own decision making.
- Students will draw conclusions that consider multiple perspectives and prioritize relevant evidence.
The Academic Study of Religion (4 credits): Students will build skills for critical and open inquiry into the ways faith and spiritual traditions shape human lives and communities.
- Students will demonstrate religious literacy by locating religious traditions within their historical, cultural, or political contexts.
- Students will critically and empathetically analyze diverse religious texts, practices, histories, ethics, and/or theologies by applying an appropriate method from the academic study of religion.
Quantitative Reasoning (4): Students will develop skills to interpret quantitative information and use it to create and critique logic and data-driven arguments.
- Students will solve problems by interpreting quantitative information in context.
- Students will demonstrate the ability to work with mathematical notation, techniques, tools, and concepts.
- Students will create and critique logical arguments supported by quantitative evidence or symbolic relationships.
Engaging the Natural World (4): Students will learn methods to develop and test theories and understandings of the physical and natural phenomena that shape our world. A lab, field experience, or applied component is required.
- Students will formulate hypotheses or meaningful questions based on their study of the physical and biological world.
- Students will draw logical conclusions from data gathered by experiment, observation, and/or from relevant sources.
Examining Self and Society (4): Students will explore methods and models for understanding human behavior within a variety of cultural, social, or structural contexts, both contemporary and historical.
- Students will analyze the social, political, and economic institutions or systems that shape human behavior.
- Students will draw conclusions about human behavior in relation to social, structural, or group contexts.
Global Engagement (4): Students learn about the factors that shape human experience in transnational, cross-cultural, or non-US contexts. Study away and world language courses with these emphases will also meet this requirement. (on Gen Ed website 04.26.23)
- Students will compare and contrast diverse global and transnational perspectives.
- Students will analyze how culture shapes experience
- Students will examine the historical and structural basis for inequalities related to race, ethnicity, language, religion, class, ability, nationality, sexuality, or gender.
Culminating Experience (1-4): Students will participate in a culminating experience that provides an opportunity to apply what they have learned throughout their time at PLU to a project, activity, or experience defined by their major department. Students will successfully complete one culminating experience course to complete their graduation requirements for general education.
- Students will integrate and apply what they have learned in their general education and major/minor coursework (and co-curricular activities, as appropriate) to a culminating project.
- Students will share their work with members of their scholarly community and in some instances with the public.
Note: these are the general education outcomes for culminating experience courses. Departments and programs will add additional outcomes for discipline-specific skills, practices, and content areas.
General Education Learning Outcomes (old program)
- Students will demonstrate comprehension of the various artistic skills and processes that contribute to a finished production or product.
- Students will evaluate aesthetic quality through analysis and judgement about works of art in a given medium.
FTWL 100
- Students will know and appreciate the benefits of physical activity and active living.
- Students will understand the relationships between nutrition, stress management and physical activity on overall health and well-being.
Activity Courses
- Students will learn the basic knowledge and skills necessary for successful participation in the activity.
- Students will increase the awareness, knowledge and behavioral skills necessary to support a lifelong commitment to movement and physical activity.
- Students will use relevant interpretive strategies to pose critical questions about literary and/or cinematic texts.
- Students will identify and explain how the formal elements of language and genre shape meaning in literary and/or cinematic texts.
- Students will draw conclusions that consider multiple perspectives and prioritize relevant evidence in the development of well-reasoned arguments.
- Students will identify and justify the beliefs and values that inform their decision making.
- Students will interpret complex philosophical texts.
- Students will critique the arguments of others, fairly and respectfully.
- Students will demonstrate religious literacy about Christian traditions by locating them within their historical, cultural, or political contexts.
- Students will critically and empathetically analyze diverse forms of Christian texts, practices, histories, ethics, and/or theologies by applying an appropriate method from the academic study of religion.
- Students will be able to explain “religion” as a category of analysis, and identify how diverse religious traditions beyond Christianity shape human purpose, meaning, or action.
- Students will examine religious traditions beyond Christianity with respect to their origins, transmission, and/or place in their societies and cultures through approaches in the academic study of religion.
- Students will demonstrate numeracy by solving quantitative problems and by interpreting quantitative information in context.
- Students will demonstrate the ability to work with mathematical notation, techniques and concepts.
- Students will create and critique logical arguments supported by quantitative evidence or symbolic relationships.
- Students will understand and apply basic concepts from a particular discipline of the natural sciences.
- Students will identify and explain organizing models of a discipline.
- Students will identify social and ethical issues pertaining to a discipline.
- Students will use the scientific method to explore the natural world.
- Students will identify and assess hypotheses or meaningful questions based on their study of the natural world.
- Students will draw logical conclusions from experiments, observations, and/or relevant sources.
- Students will apply foundational concepts to the social sciences.
- Students will systematically analyze human behavior in relation to social contexts and group behavior.
- Students will display knowledge of cultural norms and biases.
- Students will evaluate the relationships between culture and human behaviors and/or actions.
- Students will examine diverse social perspectives and cultural traditions in a US context
- Students will gain awareness and understanding of diversity in the United States, directly addressing issues such as ethnicity, gender, disability, racism, or poverty.
- Students will locate cultural and social perspectives and traditions in a global context.
- Students will apply comparative perspectives to understand a variety of cultural conditions.
- Students will integrate and/or apply what they have learned in their general education and major/minor coursework (and co-curricular activities, as appropriate) to a substantive project.
- Students will apply one or more theories or concepts from their discipline to an analysis of a particular issue relevant to the field.
- Students will share their work with members of their scholarly community.