The General Education Assessment Project at the University of Colorado Denver, begun in the fall of 2011, aims to advance teaching and learning by engaging faculty in assessing learning in each of the nine core areas and improving the core curriculum. The nine core areas of the general education curriculum ​​​are Composition, Mathematics, Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences, Natural and Physical Sciences, Humanities, Art, Cultural Diversity, and International Perspectives​​​​.

The project team consisted of approximately fifty faculty members working in nine general education core areas. For each core area, teams of four to five faculty members with expertise in the related disciplines and fields discussed the general education learning outcomes that had previously been in place and revised or re-developed those outcomes. Each team also created assessment rubrics to accompany the new learning outcomes. Once the outcomes and rubrics were in place, instructors have been assessing learning earning in each of these core areas through a variety of curriculum-embedded approaches including course exams, portfolios, projects, and internships along with indirect measures of learning such as student self-assessments and surveys.

These high-quality general education learning outcomes and rubrics will be used to inform teaching, learning, and assessment to:

• guide faculty in course development (and be included on course syllabi),
• make the curriculum more coherent and assessment more fair,
• stimulate student and faculty conversations about teaching and learning,
• provide assessment of learning information for accreditation reporting purposes, and
• present faculty with information about student strengths and weaknesses that they can use to improve their courses and programs.

Instructors teaching a course in the university core are asked to assess learning for one or more of the core area outcomes and report the results to the Office of Assessment (kennethwolf@ucdenver.edu). The assessment reporting form will take only ten to fifteen minutes to complete. This example of a completed form may be helpful to consider when working on your own submission. The Core Curriculum Oversight Committee (CCOC) will send you a summary of the findings from all of the courses in your core area to help guide teaching and learning in your core area.