Social Sciences Learning Outcomes

During the Spring 2019 General Education Assemblies for Learning Outcomes, faculty groups began to develop learning outcomes for the Social Sciences Requirement. Then, smaller Working Groups from these Assemblies along with students and advisors worked together to digest the information from the larger group and to create draft learning outcomes for Social Sciences (see below).

We invite feedback from the campus community on these outcomes.

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After taking a course in Social Sciences, students will be able to:

1. Describe and explain social science concepts, theories and methods in relation to current events, global challenges, and social issues to develop skills and information seeking and constructing reasoned supported arguments of these concepts within the discipline. (C-SLOs 1 & 2)
2. Discover, compare, and contrast how different social groups, institutions, and organization interact with collective human behavior. Consider the relationships of these interactions to class, race, ethnicity, women, gender, culture, identity, community, and/or other values.
   1. Distinguish and differentiate between diverse perspectives. (C-SLOs 2 & 3)
   2. Develop critical thinking about the methods, data, and sources used.
   3. Reflect on one’s own cultural, social, and political positionality in relation to other social groups.
   4. Synthesize and present (in written and oral form) your findings.
3. Demonstrate social awareness, cultural understanding by recognizing the different ways in which societies and their sub-groups are organized. Foster global consciousness by situating social science findings within local transnational and global social, political and/or economic contexts. (C-SLOs 4 & 5)
   1. Explain how an individual or group worldview, policy context, and/or environmental factors shape a social issue or challenge.
   2. Evaluate social scientific phenomena by reference to an equation, table of data, set of observations, graph or map.