Elizabeth Behrman, Don Blakeslee, JoLynne Campbell, Barbara Hodson, Mel Zandler

The Task Force received a charge that contained statements of the problem and proposed solutions that came originally from two sources.

The Advisor Council statement identifies two kinds of problems:
1. Specific definition of what I&P courses entail is not consistently found in our descriptions of the GEP,
2. Scheduling problems arise from the following:
    a.   numbers of classes offered are often inadequate,
    b.  classes are not accessible on a regular basis,
It suggests a solution that involves substituting a capstone requirement for the I&P requirement.

Ad Hoc Committee statement:
The committee recommends that the Issues and Perspectives category be dropped from the General Education program. The committee is concerned that courses in this category are not offered frequently enough to facilitate the implementation of this requirement of the General Education program. It also expresses concern that there is not sufficient distinction between the Further Study and Issues and Perspectives categories of courses in the current curriculum.

Finally, the committee finds it a serious concern that transfer students who frequently fulfill their General Education elsewhere are not exposed to an "integrative" course such as originally intended by the Issues and Perspective category of courses. To address these concerns, the committee recommends replacing the Issues and Perspectives requirement with an "integrative" graduation requirement to be taken by ALL graduates regardless of transfer or other status. The course should be based on a general Liberal Arts perspective but the focus can be college specific. This change will have the effect of simplifying the structure of the General Education program while also enhancing the potential achievement of the University educational mission by assuring exposure to this level course to all future WSU graduates.

Analysis:
There seem to be two separable sets of issues, one involving the rationale behind the I&P requirement and another involving its implementation or lack thereof.

A. Lack of Clarity
One is the vagueness of the goals and objectives of I&P courses within the GEP, with resulting problems for determining what courses are appropriate and how to assess outcomes. Part of the vagueness probably derives from the way in which I&P became part of the GEP. The category came into being as the result of faculty dissatisfaction with the top level of General Education course in a proposal put forward by the general education reform committee chaired by David Farnsworth. A new committee was constituted and charged with coming up with a substitute requirement, and I&P courses were the result. Finally, still another committee was given the task of reviewing course proposals to determine whether or not they fit the criteria for inclusion in the GEP. Using the definition of I&P courses given below, this committee allowed courses from units other than the Liberal Arts and Fine Arts, in contradiction to the charge to the original committee.

The point of this brief history is not to critique the process but merely to demonstrate that both history of development and political considerations helped to give rise to the current I&P course concept and its implementation. That the category is vaguely defined is beyond debate. It reads:
    "The category of courses identified as Issues and Perspectives is conceived of as a way of addressing the need for a component in general education that exposes students to certain valuable but non-canonical subjects and methodologies. In this category the committee thought to include the following types of courses (emphasis added):

1. Courses having as their focus issues or problems which have emerged as matters of concern from contemporary conditions of life and culture, e.g.,
    a. Problems concerning technology, ecology, and economics in relation to ethics, religion, politics, etc.,
    b. Issues arising from diversity of cultures, nationalities gender, race, ethnicity, class, ideologies, power, etc.
    c. Global concerns such as war and peace, nationalism, resource distribution, environment, etc.

2. Courses from any disciplines that combine two or more disciplinary subjects to demonstrate the interdependence of knowledge, as well as the connectedness of the world. e.g.,
    a. Religion, poetry, philosophy, and science in various pairings.
    b. The interrelationship of the arts or the arts and other disciplines.
    c. Synchronic viewing of an event or moment in history from the scientific, political, artistic, and religious points of view.
    d. Psychology, anthropology, social studies, business, education, engineering, and health professions
    e. Mathematics, the language of many disciplines.

In light of this definition, it is easy to see the source of the Advisor Council complaint that "Specific definition of what I&P courses entail is not consistently found in our descriptions of the General Education Program."

As originally envisioned, the requirement that became I&P was supposed to cap the General Education experience; as currently formulated, the I&P requirement is a substitute for a Further Studies course. Nevertheless, two courses currently taught have titles that begin "Introduction to...." Why are they included in the I&P category?

One possible answer is that they met the specific criteria laid out by the General Education Committee. The following are derived from committee's worksheet for evaluating I&P courses:
    1. Is the course level and prerequisite structure consistent with GE goals?
    2. Is it a Current Affairs course? If so, what is the issue that it addresses?
    3. Is it an Interdisciplinary course? If so, what disciplinary views are represented?
    4. Are course goals/objectives consistent with GE goals?
    5. Is course ability to meet GE goals clear?
    6. Does course have clear methods for evaluating outcomes in the Across-the-Curriculum elements of the GEP? (Must  cover at least two)
        Writing
        Speaking
        Computation
        Library Research

B. Difficulty in scheduling
Several factors act jointly to create scheduling problems for students (and their advisors) with respect to I&P courses. There are a limited number of such courses, and some of them are offered only irregularly (see Table 1). This limits the choices to students and their advisors that are available in any given semester. It also makes predicting whether or not an I&P course will be offered in a future semester next to impossible for all but a handful of courses.

This problem may be exacerbated by the way in which the current requirement, to take at least one I&P course, is encountered by students. When considering what courses to take in a given semester, what a student reads is the following: "Students may take either a Further Studies course in a discipline or an Issues and Perspectives course from the same disciplinary grouping." That is, in any given semester, a student does not face a clear requirement for taking an I&P course in any division. As a result, it is easy to defer taking an I&P course, and the scheduling problems that derive from too few I&P courses, some offered at irregular intervals, may encourage this. It is also true that the I&P course is supposed to build upon the skills and perspectives gained from other general education courses, so an advisor may discourage taking such a course early in the student's collegiate career. Whatever the reasons for deferring the I&P requirement, when a student reaches her senior year, she may find that there are no suitable I&P courses being offered in the correct division and at a day and time that fits her scheduling needs.

Table 1 lists the I&P course offerings for the last three calendar years (excluding summer courses). Of the 39 I&P courses offered during this period, thirteen were offered only once, and three were offered just twice. Six courses were offered three times, but of these five were not offered in either the spring or fall of 2002. Neither a student nor an advisor cant tell whether such a course has been discontinued or when it will be offered again.

A total of 14 courses were offered four or more times in the six semesters. In order of numbers of sections offered, they are:

Table 2. Regularly Offered I&P Courses

The rate of scheduling makes these predictable classes WSU's default definition of what the ultimate course in the General Education Program should be.

One reason for courses being offered only on an irregular basis and for discontinuance of I&P courses is low enrollments in some of them. Unauthorized granting of exceptions to the requirement by advisors may play a part in the low enrollments, exacerbating the scheduling problems perceived by advisors.

Strategy 1: Fix what we have

This would involve creating clearly defined category, with resulting clearly stated criteria for inclusion in the category, and creation of courses that students would want to take. Examples might include:
        Anthropology Race and Racism
        Biology: Evolution
        Physics: History of the Universe (a la Asimov)
        PoliSci: The post-colonial world

The structure also would need tweaking. The requirement would have to be stated in such a way that it no longer sounds like an option, and advisors should not be allowed to grant exceptions.

Strategy 2: Choose another model

Here are three options.

A. Create capstone courses in each discipline/program. This might involve allowing departments/programs to designate one course to be their capstone course. We probably would have to accept some existing courses (so that no additional hours are required in programs such as those in Health Professions.) We would still want to require that, in the course, students demonstrate proficiency in GE objectives (library research, writing, speech, math, critical thinking), and the products they produce in the course should be amenable to GEP assessment. If the capstone course took the form of a seminar, then the speech component is taken care of.

B. Do away with the category altogether. Instead of I&P, we might simply require another Further Studies course in one division. This might enhance critical thinking skills by exposure to another advanced course, and no additional assessment (other than that for Further Studies courses in general) would be needed.

C. Do both. That is, do away with I&P without lowering the number of General Education hours, and ask departments to identify a capstone course for their discipline, in which assessment of the goals of both the department and the GEP could be assessed.

The Task Force is unanimously of the opinion that alternative C is the superior.  Most of these "capstone" courses exist already: e.g., in any science major, the capstone ought to be a research project in that major. In engineering it is the senior design project. (Note: in Honors we have seen that it is perfectly possible to do a senior (honors) thesis in any major at all; requiring a capstone could be (for programs that choose to do it this way) as simple as requiring a thesis of all graduating students. We emphasize that programs should be in charge of deciding what the appropriate capstone is for their own students.)

The other half of our charge (4B): "Revisit the structure and components of the Basic Skills component along the guidelines recommended by the Ad hoc General Education Committee."

Ad Hoc Committee Statement:

The Ad hoc General Education Committee supports the enforcement of the Basic Skills component of the General Education program but recommends a reexamination of the core content. In its address of the composition of the basic skills component the Ad hoc committee debated a modification to include the omission of the requirement for a free standing "Speech" class and more rigorously integrate the speech component into the remaining classes taught in the general education program. A suggestion to replace the speech requirement with a critical thinking/logic component was also debated. The Committee concluded that it had insufficient data to make an official proposal for a specific change but recommends that all components be thoroughly considered and justified/explained. Perhaps all components of the basic skills should be considered in this manner.

The Problem(s) and Communications' responses:

Conversations with members of the Ad hoc committee showed that their concerns about the speech class were three:

1. That "Public Speaking" (the skill of giving a public speech), which is what is taught, is not central or basic; that the skills imparted by this course are not necessary for the vast majority of students. Perhaps far more "basic" are computer literacy or logic.

2. That the course is not taught well. The vast majority of students are taught by graduate TAs in Communications. There is indeed a component of "reasoning" (2 pages) in the course; however, most of the teachers do not know or understand basic logic, and, in fact, what the textbook has to say on the subject is wrong. Complaints about the speech requirement are most vociferous from the best of our students.

3. That testing out of the course is so difficult as to be ridiculous. Point was made of a particular student with national ranking in debate who was made to take the same basic course.

The Committee did not seem to have many if any concerns about the other two components of Basic Skills (writing and mathematics); one can only surmise that they were included in the write up so as to seem evenhanded.

Conversations with Susan Huxman produced the following:

1. That the ability to speak clearly and "ethically" is fundamental to a liberal education. That "Speech is more efficient than a stand-alone critical thinking course." That the Speech course includes library research, ethics, and diversity. That since the days of Rome, a citizen IS an orator. That a 1995 study showed that most colleges do have some kind of speech requirement, and 5 of 6 Regents universities do (not KU), and that if we did not there might be a problem with accreditation. More and more high schools are requiring a speech course for graduation.

2. That the TAs apply for the privilege of teaching in the course, that all must undergo training, that not all are Communications graduate students, that in fact there are 12 GTAs teaching along with 5 full time and 2 part time faculty, that there is a common syllabus and a weekly meeting of all TAs, that the TAs are evaluated twice every semester.

3. There IS a test-out procedure. Between 10 and 15 students ask each semester. The procedure involves passing a written test and giving a speech with a set structure.

Analysis and research:

The idea of "Basic Skills" is a good one: there probably DOES exist a set on which most of the university faculty can agree is truly basic to a university education. Our task force was in agreement with the Ad hoc Committee, and with existing procedure, that writing in the language of the country (English), and basic mathematics (Algebra) belong in this set. We do not all agree that the ability to make a public speech belongs in this set, though it may well have in ancient Rome, at least for male and moneyed citizens. We also do not all agree that computer literacy, and/or critical reasoning/logic, belong in this set.

If in fact speech is a basic skill, then, like the abilities to write good English and to solve a quadratic equation, it really ought to have been taught to students before they arrived at university. (Dr. Huxman's statement about the behavior of high schools supports this view.) Presumably this is one of the things qualified admissions was supposed to have done for us. Indeed we do get students (though not enough) who are very well qualified; in mathematics the procedure is that the student takes the higher level course for which s/he is qualified (e.g., Calculus) and is forgiven the requirement of Algebra; in English there is no such hierarchy of courses but the student may, of course, test out of English 101, and many do. We are all in agreement that, if the Speech course requirement is kept, the testing-out procedure needs to become more available and more standard.

Clearly it is not the case that most of our students are "prepared" in the above sense; perhaps we cannot soon look forward to a time when this will be so. If a student is not well prepared s/he will need remedial work, which we need to be able to supply. If the skills really are "basic", it ought not to be possible (or at least, not easily possible) to do university-level work while the deficiencies exist, and, indeed, that is probably true for science courses (math requirement) or humanities courses (writing requirement.) For which courses is this true for the speech requirement? Perhaps this is another indication of deficiencies in our GenEd program, that no such courses exist?
 

Internet research of our "peer" institutions shows that none has a "Basic Skills" component. Several have a stand-alone speech course as part of the general education requirements (e.g., University of Akron, Old Dominion University) but several do not (e.g., University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Oakland University). KU requires speech in some but not all of its colleges, and seems to have no problem with accreditation. Most are far more prescriptive than we with respect to GenEd requirements.

One of the major problems, of course, with this or with any tinkering/alteration of the GenEd program, is the goring of the particular ox involved. Communications needs the speech requirement: it directly funds seven of their faculty and a dozen of their grad students. It is hard to imagine that students would voluntarily take the course in the numbers they currently do, were it not required.

My extensive experience with Honors students leads me to agree that the best students are the ones who (with the exception of students lucky enough to be in Dr. Huxman's Honors Speech class) detest the speech requirement and think the class arbitrary and worthless. While the procedures Communications has established for the training and monitoring of the TAs seem good, it is certainly true that what scanty material is in the text on logic is in fact wrong, and one can understand the indignance of those who teach logic toward its being taught incorrectly. Ethics and diversity are surely excellent things to know about, but since these are not the basic justification for the course their appearance is secondary.

Yet another problem, though not addressed by the Ad Hoc Committee, is the bleeding-off of credit hours by community colleges. They are able to do this because of the articulation agreement; we can sidestep its rules by instituting "graduation requirements" in place of general education ones. In place of the Basic Skills, for example, we could require that all students take a mathematics course numbered 111 or above; that all students take two English courses numbered 100 or above; that all students take a speech course. Students who arrive capable of performing at a higher level than the basic would still be required to take some course in the area. Thus it would avail a student naught to go to Butler for Algebra; when s/he came back to WSU s/he would still have to take a mathematics course here. This would also solve the problem of, e.g., students enrolling in Physics 213 who have taken its prerequisite algebra at Butler but have (as is common) learned nothing and therefore flunk the subsequent Physics course at WSU.

Possibilities:

A. Keep things as-is, though improve the testing-out procedure.

B. Let individual colleges decide whether they want a speech requirement. Possible different courses targeted for different populations.

C. Allow the market to work: offer students the choice between a critical thinking course or a speech course, to satisfy this requirement. Or: among the three possibilities of: logic, computer literacy, speech.

D. Get rid of the Basic Skills component entirely, substituting the graduation requirement detailed above.

Three of the five task force members were most comfortable with alternative D combined with alternative B; that is, to substitute the graduation requirement for the current Basic Skills requirement, but let individual colleges decide whether to include Speech in the graduation requirement.

Appendix: motions

The Graduation Task Force proposes:  that each discipline or program adopt a capstone course for itself, to be reviewed and approved by the University Curriculum Committee, and that this course be an additional graduation requirement. Small departments may not have the time or resources to create or offer a capstone course alone; thus, a College may have an a capstone course shared by different disciplines in the college, as may, e.g., a division (LAS). Students in the capstone course would be expected to demonstrate proficiency in GE objectives (library research, writing, speech, math, critical thinking), and the products that they produce in the course would be assessable by GEP assessment as well as whatever goals the department/program had for its major. Existing courses, or modified existing courses, could be proposed. This capstone course would take the place of the I&P requirement, which would be done away with as part of the GE program.

The Graduation Task force proposes: that we eliminate the basic skills part of the GE program, and in its stead establish the following graduation requirement: that every student take at least one mathematics course of at least the level of college algebra, and at least two English courses of at least the level of 100.  Since these are "basic" skills, a student entering college should already have at least this level of preparation, and be ready to go on to take a truly college-level course in each of these areas. The idea is that we establish the requirement that, by the time of graduation, the student has performed at least that level. With respect to the Speech part of basic skills, we propose that we let individual colleges decide whether or not to include a speech requirement for graduation from their programs. Colleges may wish to require a specific speech course tailored for their own particular needs. Alternatively, they may wish to allow students to test out of this requirement, or not to establish a requirement at all in this area.