Learning Goals

Washington State University Vancouver provides undergraduate students an outstanding educational experience preparing them for active and productive lives, effective relationships, and access to opportunities. Through its core courses, the general education program is designed to promote academic learning about specific disciplines as well as prepare them for the critical and collaborative demands of the 21st century.  As students investigate and explore important personal, scientific, and societal questions, their course work is organized around achievement of the following six educational goals:

Critical Thinking
Quantitative & Symbolic Reasoning
Information Literacy
Communication
Self in Society
Specialty

Critical Thinking
Graduates will use knowledge claims of evidence and context to reason ethically and reach conclusions as well as to innovate in imaginative ways. These steps are equally applicable to different kinds of problems such as scientific theory development and testing, ethical problem solving, and innovation.

  1. Define the question or problem and its contextual boundaries.
  2. Identify and define key concepts that are the foundation for a line of reasoning.
  3. Identify personal beliefs, values, etc. that can be barriers to knowing other belief systems, values, etc.
  4. Identify and evaluate underlying assumptions and values such as unstated conceptual and cultural paradigms.
  5. Employ symbolic reasoning to interpret and communicate abstract concepts within and across contexts (i.e. cultural, social, political, ethical contexts).
  6. Identify the presence of traps and blocks to creative thinking such as perceptual, emotional, or cultural blocks that interfere with the ability to explore, manipulate ideas freely.
  7. Select and evaluate evidence as appropriate to the context or situation.
  8. Distinguish between fact and opinion.
  9. Identify and apply relevant causal relationships, explanations, and/or theory for addressing the problem.
  10. Identify contradictions and faulty logic.
  11. Evaluate possible alternative perspectives, explanations, and solutions.
Quantitative and Symbolic Reasoning
Graduates will analyze and communicate appropriately with mathematical and symbolic concepts. They will critically evaluate the quantitative and symbolic information used to represent and draw inferences regarding problems. Graduates will demonstrate quantitative and symbolic reasoning by their ability to:
  1. Estimate and check answers to mathematical problems to determine reasonableness, identify alternatives, and select optimal results.
  2. Use available technology and tools to apply quantitative and symbolic methods to solve problems.
  3. Draw conclusions from computational and symbolic representations in order to check the logic and validity of statements and models.
Information Literacy
Graduates will use a systematic approach to accessing, evaluating and using information. Graduates will demonstrate information literacy by their ability to:
  1. Determine the extent and type of information needed.
  2. Implement effectively-designed search strategies.
  3. Access information effectively and efficiently from computer, print, and human data sources.
  4. Assess credibility and applicability of information sources.
  5. Use information effectively to accomplish a purpose.
  6. Access and use information ethically and legally.
Communication
Graduates will write, speak, and listen to achieve intended and meaningful understanding. As a foundation to effective communication, students will demonstrate the following observable outcomes:
  1. Qualify message by context: Identify how an audience's circumstances, background, values, interests and needs filter messages sent and received.
  2. Express concepts, propositions and beliefs in coherent, concise and technically correct form.
  3. Choose and use communication medium (visual, written, graphic, audio) effectively.
  4. Choose and use communication technologies (ranging from pencil & paper to cell phones and computers) effectively and intentionally.
  5. Speak with apparent comfort in front of groups.
  6. Listen actively.
  7. Follow social norms for individual and small group interactions.
Self in Society
Graduates will employ self-understanding and interact effectively with others of similar and diverse cultures, values, perspectives, and realities. Graduates will demonstrate a sense of self in society by their ability to:
  1. Critically assess their own core values, cultural assumptions, and biases in relation to those held by other individuals, cultures, and societies.
  2. Recognize how patterns & events in the present and past have structured and affected human societies and world ecologies.
  3. Critically assess the cultural and social underpinnings of knowledge claims.
  4. Participate in the building of inclusive communities.
  5. Practice personal integrity, citizenship, and service to others shaped by a spirit of compassion.
Specialty
Graduates will hone a specialty for the benefit of themselves, their communities, their employers, and for society at large. Graduates will demonstrate specialty expertise by their ability to:
  1. Show a depth of knowledge within the chosen academic field of study that reflects an appropriate degree of specialization.
  2. Show a breadth of knowledge within the chosen field based on integration of its history, core methods, techniques, vocabulary, and unsolved problems.
  3. Apply the concepts of the discipline to personal, academic, service learning, professional, and/or community activities.
  4. Understand how the methods and concepts of the chosen discipline relate to those of other disciplines, and possess the ability to engage in cross-disciplinary activities.