Author: emgonline

A recent article published in both in The Hechinger Report and The Washington Post discusses the frustrating experience that many students have in effectively transferring their credits when they change institutions and the solutions, including Interstate Passport®, that have been developed to alleviate this issue. “That complication has given rise to something called the Interstate Passport, which lets students who have mastered agreed-upon “learning outcomes” transfer among participating institutions in nine states — Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — without having to re-take general-education courses.”

Author: Jon Marcus

This recent article in Inside Higher Ed makes the case that community colleges provide workforce training and a pathway to baccalaureate degrees, and both of these objectives are needed in today’s America. Community colleges provide access to higher education to millions of students that otherwise may not have it, and the essential component of that access is transfer. “An effective community college transfer process has the potential to be a powerful catalyst for individual economic mobility and heightened lifetime earnings for low-income students and, in turn, transform our society.”

Authors Stephen Handel and Eileen Strempel note that, “best practices are emerging that create sustained and strategic partnerships dedicated to the success of our nation’s transfer students.” Those practices include outreach, transitional advising, recruitment, strengthened partnerships with four-year institutions, and state and institution policies that foster successful transfer.

Both of the recent Inside Higher Ed articles summarized above describe general education innovations that are not likely to fit neatly into course-and-credit based equivalency systems for students who transfer either to or from the institutions. For colleges and universities more dependent on either sending or receiving transfer students than those highlighted in the article, the need to stay in step with partner institutions’ general education course and credit patterns can inhibit innovation.

The fact that Interstate Passport is based on learning outcomes, rather than on specific courses and credits, means that the general education programs offered by Network members could have an almost unlimited variety of approaches to how the curriculum is configured and delivered. For example, like the Passport, Ripon College’s general education innovations were based on faculty conversations about, “What do we want students to be able to do?” Much like in the faculty-led process of developing the Passport Learning Outcomes, they found that, “What faculty members thought students needed to learn was nearly identical to AAC&U’s data on what employers want from graduates.”

As institutions become more comfortable with identifying agreed-upon learning outcomes, and documenting the proficiency of their students in achieving them, faculties may thereby become freer to be more innovative in how general education outcomes are achieved while continuing to make transfer options more efficient. The Interstate Passport Network welcomes applications from institutions with innovative general education programs that ascribe to outcomes consistent with the Passport Learning Outcomes.

Jane Sherman, Passport State Coordinator

The United States Air Force Academy was established in 1954, and since that time the general education curriculum has been its defining characteristic – a single core curriculum with no academic majors. Since 2006, the Academy has undergone a process very similar to the development of the Interstate Passport framework: the development and assessment of a single set of institution-wide outcomes based on the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes. The USAFA mapped a list of 19 outcomes to a variety of courses, experiences and assessments that spanned three “mission elements” of the institution: academics, athletics, and military training. Starting in 2013 staff and faculty from the three mission elements began cross-referencing the 19 outcomes with the “Institutional Competencies” used by the Air Force in the officer development program. This work has resulted in a list of nine outcomes and a series of related proficiencies that a cadet should achieve. Among the nine focus areas are Critical Thinking; Scientific Reasoning and the Principles of Science; The Human Condition, Cultures, and Societies; and Leadership Teamwork and Organizational Management. Sound familiar? Some but not all of the nine USAFA areas match up to the Passport knowledge and content areas. And, as has been the experience of faculty members at Interstate Passport institutions, the whole exercise of mapping learning outcomes and determining proficiency has fostered frank communication about outcomes and assessment across the institution. Faculty and staff have had to “get out of their comfort zone and hear best practices from other institutions.” One member of the outcomes USAFA strategy team noted that this work “breaks that paradigm that is just another initiative among many.”

A team from the United States Air Force Academy will be presenting on the reform efforts at the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ General Education and Assessment Conference, February 15–17, 2018, in Philadelphia.

Read the full article about the USAFA general education reform at AAC&U’s website.