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GE Designation Guidance

GENERAL GUIDANCE

The DUEEC Curriculum Sub-Committee uses the following as a guide to determine what courses will have GE designation attached to them, as related to the descriptions found in the GE section of the current catalog. GE Learning Outcomes (GELOs) may be found here. A link to these descriptions may also be found within the GE section of the Curriculog course proposal form.

The GE program is intended to provide students breadth in their curriculum to complement their major. Courses will also typically not be approved for a large number of designations but should instead focus on effectively addressing a limited number of General Education Goals. The course description should also clearly reflect that the GE goals are substantially addressed.

General education courses will typically not have multiple prerequisites that would make them inaccessible to a general audience. Designations should not be requested if pre-requisites would automatically satisfy the same requirement; for instance, an upper-division biology course should not request a Life Science designation if a pre-requisite already satisfies the requirement, since it would be redundant.

Courses proposed for GE designations should demonstrate in the Curriculog description and an attached syllabus specifically 1) how the course will provide students the described GE learning experience and 2) the opportunities (assignments) they will have to demonstrate their learning. These should be addressed specifically in the GE section (“Explain how the Course Learning Outcomes address each of the GE Program Learning Outcomes selected above”). Sufficient details should be given to allow the committee to determine that the relevant GE learning outcome is being substantively addressed and how it will be assessed.

The committee also looks at the Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) to see that they align with the requested GE designations. A course with GE designations related to writing, for example, should list written communication in the CLOs. While course topics and assignments may change with instructors and time, the CLOs should be relatively constant and help to ensure that the course continues to meet the requirements of the GE designation.

GUIDANCE FOR LOWER DIVISION GE DESIGNATIONS

This designation is currently fulfilled by Spark 001 and Spark 010. Guidance for proposing a Spark seminar may be found here: https://ge.ucmerced.edu/faculty/teaching-spark-seminar

Spark seminars introduce students to life at a research university. They should support both a student’s intellectual development as well as supporting them as they join our campus community. It is expected that they will define a research question as a primary component of a Spark seminar. The seminar should also connect students with campus resources and provide a small-group community to support their success as first-year students.

It is recommended that instructors consider teaching a two-credit Spark 010 as the largest institutional need, but three and four credit Spark courses are also taught. Spark 001, which must be three or four credits, also requires that students communicate in a variety of ways to diverse audiences, including written, visual, oral and/or numerical modes of communication to explore and convey ideas.

This designation is currently only met through the WRI 10 foundational writing class.

This designation is currently met through a limited number of foundational quantitative reasoning classes in various disciplines. New courses should typically not request this designation without prior consultation with the GE Chair.

This refers to foreign or computing languages and is usually satisfied in highschool by students.  UC Merced classes satisfying this requirement correlate to at least the second semester of a foreign language or specific foundational computing language course.

For All General Education Designations:

Approaches to Knowledge:

Any proposal must explicitly reference the Approach to Knowledge in the Course Description & will also need to align two or more Course Learning Outcomes with the proposed Approach to Knowledge.
Intellectual Experience:
Any proposal will need to align one or more Course Learning Outcomes (CLO) with the proposed Intellectual Experience.
 
Designation Guidance for Approaches to Knowledge and Intellectual Experiences

Approaches to Knowledge:

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve more than half of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. Physical science fields such as chemistry, physics, astronomy, earth sciences, engineering, and other related fields.
  2. The scientific principles that govern inanimate, physical systems.
  3. The scientific methods and/or theories used to understand and/or characterize the natural world.

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve more than half of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. biology or related fields.
  2. scientific principles that govern living systems.
  3. how living systems interact within the natural world

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve more than half of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. anthropology, cognitive science, economics, heritage studies, management, political science, psychology, sociology, and similar fields.
  2. qualitative or quantitative methods to study, explain and model individuals in a social context
  3. qualitative or quantitative methods to study, explain and model society(ies)

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

 

Literary and Textual Analysis

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that students will:

  1. Explore how language creates meaning and ambiguity

AND do at least half of the following:

  1. Interpret and analyze written materials exclusively in a Humanities context/lens, such as:
    • Critiquing or contrasting written texts
    • Rhetorical analysis
    • Analyzing literature to identify themes, meaning, or arguments
    • Interpreting texts to expand upon their themes, meaning, or arguments
  2. Explore the intersections of language, meaning, and text in a Humanities context/lens.

*This will not be fulfilled by courses that do reading or writing in order to primarily expose students to disciplinary content. There must be explicit analysis of the literature or text and how it achieves its intent.

 

Media and Visual Analysis

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve more than half of the following:

 

Media and Visual Analysis courses should include a substantial focus on the interpretation and analysis of media and visual materials. As with the LTA requirement, the focus should be on the interpretation and analysis, such as critiquing, contrasting, and interpreting. Courses primarily based on written materials are more likely to be designated as Literary and Textual Analysis courses.

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. interpretation of media and visual materials in a humanities context/lens
  2. analysis of media and visual materials in a humanities context/lens
  3. how media and images create, shape, and express meaning in a humanities context/lens

*A course that uses media or has students produce media primarily to convey disciplinary information would likely not satisfy the requirement.

 

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

Societies and Cultures of the Past

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal provide explicit evidence that the course will address the following:

  1. The human experience prior to the contemporary era (1945 CE)

AND that every student will substantially focus at least half of the following:

  1. Exploring multiple dimensions/aspects of one or more past societies and/or cultures.
  2. Approaches and/or theoretical lenses for critical inquiry in relation to past societies and/or cultures.
  3. Gain understanding and knowledge of past societies and/or cultures.
  4. Understanding one or more past societies and/or cultures through different disciplinary approaches.

 

Intellectual Experiences:

Diversity and Identity

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve at least one of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. the ways in which identities such as (but not limited to) race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender, religion, social class, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, and immigration status are socially constructed but have real-life consequences
  2. how socially constructed identities are intersectional and shaped by the historic systems of power that perpetuate structural inequality
  3. their own experiential knowledge and perspectives while situating their own experiences in relation to and/or intersection with identities different than their own
  4. how political, economic, and social practices interact with cultural values and beliefs, both within one cultural system and when multiple cultural systems interact with one another

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

Global Awareness

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve at least one of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

“Modern cultures, contemporary issues, and current environments in nations or regions outside the US” by the following:

  1. Study abroad experience
  2. Intermediate or advanced language study that explicitly explores modern culture in a global context/lens
  3. Other courses that explicitly address the modern global experience

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

Sustainability

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve at least one of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. Various drivers, consequences, and trade-offs of environmental dynamics.
  2. Ecological, social, and technological systems in scientific, cultural, and/or historical contexts.
  3. Environmental and economic resource streams, and relationships among them.
  4. Appropriate quantitative or qualitative reasoning to the analysis of environmental systems.
  5. Promotion of sustainability by critical inquiry, creative expression, social justice, and community engagement.

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

Scientific Method

Any course that satisfies this criterion must explicitly discuss or practice the construction and testing of scientific hypotheses. In addition, it should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve at least one of the following:

Knowledge, comprehension, and application of:

  1. how the scientific method leads to new knowledge about the natural world by correcting and integrating previous knowledge using empirical evidence.
  2. laboratory methods to develop and test a model for unknown phenomena.
  3. philosophy of science focusing on the scientific method in which students investigate the nature of building scientific knowledge.

*Some proposers request this designation based on merely using scientific methods (techniques, equipment, computational methods, application of machine learning, etc.) to confirm known relationships/information. That designation will in general not be approved in these cases.

 

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

Ethics

To satisfy this requirement your course syllabus or Curriculog proposal should provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve at least one of the following:

  1. Discussion, analysis, and comprehension of ethical situations and/or dilemmas.
  2. Investigate, discuss, and comprehend the ethical implications of disciplinary-specific research, policy, or behavior.
  3. Application of disciplinary-specific theories to analyze ethical issues and their implications.

Examples of actions that achieve Knowledge, comprehension, and application can be found here: CLICK HERE

 

Upper Division requirements:

Writing in the Discipline

(GELO 3). With respect to the Writing in the Discipline (WID) GE designation, it is described as “This upper division requirement can be satisfied either with a designated writing course or a writing-intensive course in the major. The focus is on how to write for a particular field. A one-credit lab course attached to another course may also satisfy this requirement if the primary focus of the lab is writing.”

All of the following must be achieved in order to be designated as a WID course:

  1. CLO must be aligned with WID requirements
  2. Substantial writing production (approximately 5000 words).
  3. Writing goes through an iterative process of brainstorming, drafting, and revision.
  4. Writing receives substantial peer and instructor formative feedback.
  5. Writing should expose students to disciplinary-specific professional rhetorical conventions, standards, genres, and resources.
  6. Writing should make up a sizeable portion of the course grade.

Culminating Experience

Any course that satisfies this criterion must provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate the totality of their learning and may include traditional capstone courses, senior or advanced seminars, service-learning courses, or other methods majors choose to integrate learning in the program.

Regardless of the specific format, the Culminating Experience must provide explicit evidence that every student will achieve all of the following:

  1. CLO must be aligned with CE requirements
  2. Communicate their work, including at least two different methods.
  3. Conduct research on their discipline. (This should build upon the primary themes in the discipline, scaffolding upon them in a clearly culminating experience.)
  4. Engage actively with others (team-building, collaborative work, presentations, student leadership of discussion, etc.)

*Note that it is not strictly necessary that a student complete a Culminating Experience in their major, but this is the preferred scenario.


ge_designation_guidance_statement_updated_march_2024.pdf