The Core Student Outcomes Study will be conducted by the Office of the Chancellor’s Center for Teaching and Learning from January to June, 2007.

Two faculty project specialists at CTL will:

1. Gather information from each college and university on their institution wide core outcomes.
2. Compile and share systemwide on a Web site the ways in which core outcomes are defined as knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies. The faculty may also interview administrators, faculty, and students to discover what processes are useful for sharing these goals across a campus community.
3. Finally, the study will include an assessment of common and distinctive features of institutions’ core outcomes goals, definitions, and integration into the curriculum.

The purpose of this study is to gather information from each institution to provide a general systemwide understanding of the core educational outcomes for students that are the goals of each of our colleges and universities. While some institutions clearly specify their goals for students’ core skills and knowledge, others do not, or have not publicly articulated them.

This study will also provide an opportunity for those institutions that have already done extensive work determining these core outcomes – as a part of an institutional assessment, accreditation, curriculum development and reform process or other endeavors – an opportunity to share their hard work while providing a valuable resource to those institutions that have not begun the process or are just in the early stages.

Nationwide, institutions use phrases unique to their college or university to term what we are calling core outcomes. They include: “principles of undergraduate learning,” “expectations of graduates,” and “core abilities.” The Association of American Colleges and Universities recently used the phrase “essential learning outcomes” to describe four broad outcomes:

• Knowledge of human cultures
• Intellectual and practical skills
• Personal and social responsibility
• Integrative learning

Core outcomes help “encourage the rigor of preparation, interdisciplinary and team learning and links between experiences in and out the classroom.”

Most of our colleges and universities have formulated statements about their core outcomes for graduates in response to the Higher Learning Commission's accreditation requirements. For example, Criterion Four: Core Component 4b, expects that "The organization demonstrates that acquisition of a breadth of knowledge and skills and the exercise of intellectual inquiry are integral to its educational programs."

In 2004, the Center for Teaching and Learning conducted a pilot project to explore the overlapping issues of liberal education, general education, and the qualities of a liberally educated person. This was part of an effort to improve transfer by developing campus-based definitions of liberal education and/or general education and aligning curriculum to those definitions. Conversations centered on what students need to know and be able to do to be successful after they transfer. There was positive feedback to support having the conversations at other campuses.

In 2005, several campuses participated in group conversations, led by Senior Vice Chancellor Linda Baer, about what colleges and students would look like in the year 2010. They were given a framework of questions in four areas (students, teaching and learning, curriculum and program, and support for learning). The participants concurred that the, “2010 conversations provided a stimulating experience for faculty and staff and can be the impetus for ongoing faculty discussions about the future.”

Also in 2005, the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum Oversight Committee suggested the need for more detailed information and conversation about the expected core competencies of our graduates.

1. How has each institution defined core student outcomes and competencies for graduates? If not, how will they?
2. What process was used to define the core outcomes (e.g., committees, etc.)
3. How have the outcomes been evaluated? What process is being used?
4. How have the outcomes been communicated across campus: to faculty, staff and students?
5. How have outcomes been integrated into campus culture and curriculum?

We believe that the information gathered from this study will provide a foundation on which to build future college and university initiatives as well as a resource that may be used throughout the MnSCU system to share information and assist in planning.

Many of our colleges and universities have spent extensive amounts of time working on their institutional outcomes. They may contribute to this study by simply sharing their core outcomes and their processes for development and evaluation. Institutions in the early stages of developing core outcomes may use the information from this study and CTL as a resource to assist in developing their own core outcomes. It will be up to each college and university to determine the ways in which they will utilize the study’s findings.