Big Idea of EGC
The Education for Global Citizenship Program is an upper-division liberal arts experience required of all students that is informed by historical and contemporary dialogues about globalization and civic engagement.
As Kevin Hovland writes in Shared Futures: Global Learning and Liberal Education (AAC&U, 2006), “global knowledge, global engagement, intercultural knowledge, and intercultural competence” are essential to a high-quality liberal arts education it the 21st century.
Toward the goal of achieving Fort Lewis College’s liberal arts outcomes, the EGC Program leads students to develop an awareness of how their lives intersect with globalization and to reflect on how the actions (or inactions) of individuals and organizations can shape our collective futures.
EGC learning outcomes
The learning outcomes for the EGC program are organized into two categories: college-wide liberal arts outcomes and global citizenship outcomes.
College-wide Liberal Education Outcomes. After a student has completed a course or an experience that counts for the EGC requirement, s/he will have demonstrated at an upper-division level:
- Learning as inquiry – The ability to use modern methods to access, analyze, interpret, and apply a wide range of information, data, and appropriate sources.
- Critical thinking as problem solving – The ability to analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and apply information in order to solve complex problems.
- Communication as intellectual contribution – The ability to contribute to scholarly understanding of a subject by balancing complexity and clarity of argument, clear conceptual organization of evidence, and adaptation to context and audience.
- Action as responsible application of academic learning – The ability to use all of the above to make positive contributions to one’s community and the larger society.
EGC Program Outcomes. After a student has completed a course or an experience that counts for the EGC requirement, they will have:
- Demonstrated an awareness of the global dimensions of social, ecological, political, economic, or cultural systems.
- Critically analyzed the global phenomena, problems, issues, or topics that are the specific focus of the course using diverse cultural perspectives and multiple disciplinary frameworks.
- Identified possible responses to the global phenomena, problems, issues or topics that are the specific focus of the course. These responses may be enacted by individuals, social networks, movements, organizations, governments or other entities.
Course Questionnaire
The following questionnaire is adapted from Laurie Richlin (2006), Blueprint for Learning: Constructing College Courses to Facilitate, Assess, and Document Learning, pp.18-19.
Please respond to the following questions in a word document to help your EGC faculty colleagues better understand your course.
- Please define the global phenomena, problems, issues, or topics that will be the specific focus of your course.
- Regarding the topic defined in question #1 above, what do you want to convey, explore, or teach about?
- How will you incorporate diverse cultural perspectives in your course?
- How will you incorporate multiple disciplines in your course?
- What are your specific learning outcomes for the course? What will students know and be able to do at the end of your course?
- Discuss how your course design supports the achievement of those learning outcomes.
- Discuss your assessment plan. At various points during the course or at the end of the course, how will you ascertain if students know and are able to do what you wanted them to do? Please discuss how you will gather your data and how you will evaluate that data.
Syllabus checklist
The syllabus sent as part of the course approval process should have the following elements:
- Course title and “catalog-length” description (no more than 60 words)
- Reading list
- Learning outcomes (See #5 on Course Questionnaire)
- Course schedule
>Day-by-day or week-by-week breakdown of course
- Course activities that will drive grade/ be vehicles for assessing achievement of learning outcomes
>Exams
>Written assignments
>Presentations
>Other Activities
