General Education Certification for COMPSCI Courses

General Education (Gen Ed) goals and learning outcomes were revised by the General Education Review Committee (GERC) in Spring 2016. GERC updated the set of Gen Ed elective categories and their descriptions in the 2016-17 academic year.

Now all departments that offer Gen Ed elective courses need to decide whether to "recertify" each of their Gen Ed elective courses. This involves submitting a recertification request to GERC and the University Curriculum Committee (UCC). We are required to tell GERC and UCC

1. Which new Gen Ed category the course belongs to.
2. How the course fulfills the learning outcomes (LOs) of the relevant Gen Ed category.

Any Gen Ed electives that are not recertified by January 2019 will no longer be Gen Ed electives.

Deadline

Monday, October 22 at 10:00am if you are making changes to the course in addition to Gen Ed recertification. This will allow the department and the College Curriculum Committee to approve these changes before they go to GERC.

Wednesday, October 24 at 10:00am if you are only requesting Gen Ed recertification. These proposals go directly to GERC.

Please contact Zach Oster if you think you might miss the deadline(s). There may be a way to give you a few additional days if you need them.

Skip to the instructions

Helpful links

General Education

Official General Education page for instructors

New (2017) Gen Ed category descriptions

Gen Ed learning goals and outcomes

CourseLeaf

CourseLeaf course management site (UW-W single sign-on required)

Search for COMPSCI 172 or COMPSCI 174 for examples of fully completed Gen Ed recertification proposals. These also included other curriculum changes.

Example documents

COMPSCI 172: Intro to Java

Sample syllabus (PDF, Word), Qualtrics survey report

COMPSCI 174: Intro to C++

Sample syllabus (PDF, Word), Qualtrics survey report

What course(s) am I responsible for recertifying?

These are, in most cases, the faculty members who have taught each course most recently.

Academic staff members are not required to help with curriculum work. Jenny and Tina are welcome, but not required, to help with Gen Ed recertification for COMPSCI 162, 170, and 171.

What do we need to do?

1. Check the new (2017) Gen Ed category descriptions to decide which category your course should fit into.
• The Math/Non-Lab Science (GM) category no longer exists. It has been replaced by two new categories: Natural Science (GN) and Quantitative Reasoning (GQ).
• Computer Science Gen Ed courses will all be recertified in the GQ category.
2. Review the Gen Ed learning goals and outcomes. Identify which outcomes within each goal are satisfied, at least in part, by your course.
   • Pay special attention to the outcomes in the Quantitative Reasoning goal, since a GQ course must satisfy this goal.
   • Your course does not need to satisfy all of the goals, and it does not need to satisfy all of the objectives within a given goal.
3. Add language to the course syllabus describing how your course fulfills General Education learning goals and outcomes.
   • You can place this anywhere in your syllabus, including at the end (but maybe before the University Statement).
   • A sample General Education statement from COMPSCI 172 and 174 is included later on this page.
4. Check the course syllabus to make sure that it includes all of the mandatory information for UW-Whitewater course syllabi. GERC and UCC will not accept a syllabus that does not contain all of these items.
5. Decide whether the course description, prerequisites, learning objectives, or other aspects of the course need to be updated. If so, please enter your proposed changes into CourseLeaf when you create the recertification request.
6. Create a curriculum proposal for Gen Ed recertification of your course on the CourseLeaf course management page.
   1. Log in with Net-ID and password, then click the icon that appears (if prompted).
   2. Search for your course number in the search box at the top.
   3. Click the green "Edit Course" button.
   4. Make changes as described in the "Creating the CourseLeaf proposal" section, below.
   5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the gray "Save Changes" button to save a draft of your proposal.
   6. Tell Zach that you've written your proposal so he can review it before starting the CourseLeaf workflow.
   Jenny and Tina will probably not have access to CourseLeaf. Zach can enter changes for them.

Creating the CourseLeaf proposal

• Course title and 25-character abbreviation (check for correctness and clarity)
• Prereq/coreq (check for correctness and appropriateness)
• This course revision/edit does not change more than 50% of the content.
• Summarize the changes: "Request Gen Ed recertification." If other changes are requested, summarize these too.
• General Education Application Type: Recertification
• Former elective category: GM
• New elective category: GQ
• Click the "Qualtrics survey" link on the proposal page and complete the survey. Plan to spend at least 20 minutes completing this survey. The survey will ask you the following questions.
1. Name/email of person completing survey
2. Department
3. Course prefix (COMPSCI), number, and title
4. Gen Ed elective category being requested
5. "Briefly explain how this course aligns with the scope and objectives for this category."
6. "General education electives are presumed to be open to all students without restriction. Courses intended for a specific program or major are usually not eligible for general education elective designation. If this course carries prerequisites and/or is intended exclusively for students in a specific program, explain why it should nonetheless be designated a general education elective. If not applicable, please indicate with N/A."
• Suggested response for all except COMPSCI 162:

  This course's only prerequisites are mathematics proficiency courses that the vast majority of UW-Whitewater students are required to complete or test out of. Computer programming requires familiarity with essential mathematical concepts such as functions and variables, and it also requires a certain level of skill with abstraction and symbolic manipulation. MATH 139 (to a lesser extent) and MATH 141 (to a greater extent) provide the necessary knowledge and skills; MATH 140 does not.

• Suggested response for COMPSCI 162:

  All students may take this course when they complete the mathematics proficiency requirement or are concurrently enrolled in any mathematics proficiency course, even MATH 140. This ensures that students have the minimal mathematical proficiency needed to succeed in this course.

7. Select all Gen Ed goals that are addressed by your course.
8. For each Gen Ed goal that you selected, and for each learning outcome (LO) within that goal, answer these five questions.
1. To what extent is this learning outcome (LO) addressed in the course? {A primary LO, As implicit or secondary LO, Not relevant}
2. Is this outcome formally assessed (including feedback to students)? {Yes, No}
3. Level of instruction, if applicable. If you marked an objective "Not relevant" earlier, then do not choose either option for that objective here.
4. If assessed, how? [free-response: explain how you assess this, or "Not assessed" if not assessed]
5. Is direct instruction provided [for this outcome]? {Yes, No - only opportunities to practice, No instruction or formal practice}
• Upload your updated syllabus in "Updated course syllabus".
• If "Course Components & Hours" are empty, fill in the following info.

  Component Type

  LEC

  # Credits

  3

  # Direct Hours/Term

  48

  # Indirect Hours/Term

  96

• Course catalog description: Check for correctness. If the description is truncated, remove unneeded words from the course description.
• Course change justification: Write only "Gen Ed recertification" unless you are proposing other changes.
• Assessment data: Leave this empty unless you are proposing other changes.
• Learning outcomes or learning objectives: Paste the course LOs from your syllabus.
• Baccalaureate learning outcomes (optional): Select the outcomes that your course contributes to satisfying. Choose "Yes" for each outcome that you directly assess; choose "No" for the others.
• How does course address program-level LOs: Paste your Gen Ed syllabus statement. These are not part of the Computer Science major, so you do not need to address Computer Science major LOs.
• Budgetary impact: "none" for all sections, unless you are proposing changes that might affect the cost to offer the course.
• Bibliography: Not required because this is not a new course.
• Attach course syllabus: Not required unless this is a major (> 50%) course revision. A major revision requires old (pre-revision) and new (post-revision) syllabi.
• Other supporting documents: Not required. Someone else will upload your Qualtrics answers to this proposal.
• Other comments: Not required.

Sample General Education syllabus statement

This course is a Quantitative Reasoning (GQ) elective in the General Education program. It addresses the following General Education goals:

• Critical and Creative Thinking: Students apply their knowledge of the programming constructs taught in this course to design and evaluate strategies (i.e., algorithms) for solving a variety of increasingly complex problems. Specific General Education learning outcomes addressed include:
  • 2a: Explain and analyze relevant ideas, arguments, and problems
  • 2g: Design, evaluate, and implement strategies to solve problems or answer open-ended questions
• Quantitative Reasoning: Algorithms and computer programs are mathematical formalizations of strategies for solving problems. Students convert problem statements given in English and/or in algebraic forms into algorithms and then into programs. They then evaluate the correctness of their programs' output and correct errors in their strategies as needed (e.g., debugging). Students are also sometimes asked to explain information presented in mathematical forms, e.g., the expected behavior of a segment of program code when executed by a computer. Specific General Education learning outcomes addressed include:
  • 5a: Explain information presented in mathematical forms (e.g., equations, graphs, diagrams, tables, words
  • 5b: Convert relevant information into various mathematical forms (e.g., equations, graphs, diagrams, tables, words)
  • 5c: Efficiently and accurately carry out calculations to solve problems using appropriate tools and technology

Achievement of these outcomes will be assessed through in-class lab assignments, programming homework assignments, quizzes, and tests. Feedback will be given primarily through grades and comments on assignments, particularly programming assignments.

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