General Education Requirement "E" - Ethics

General Education Curriculum
As approved by the General Education Committee on 10/27/04

Description:

Courses in this category will examine the human value ideologies (ethical and moral systems and concepts) that are associated with societies, institutions, and individuals in the modern world. Students will be offered comparative perspectives on questions of value in human experience and will examine value ideologies in cultural, social, and/or personal contexts.

The Ethics (E) requirement is designed to help students improve their awareness of the values that inform their and others' choices and actions, and to develop students' abilities to understand and resolve problems and conflict in their personal and social lives.

Goals:

Students will learn:

• about moral and ethical causes and effects of personal choices, actions, and decisions
• how contextual and experiential factors influence values and value systems
• how personal values relate to larger social contexts

Objectives:

Students will be able to:

• compare value systems by examining their likely or actual influence upon specific situations to which people respond differently
• analyze how personal values affect communal experience, locally and beyond
• relate personal values to social responsibility

Assessment:

Students' performance of the objectives of the E requirement of the General Education Program will be assessed by:

1. pre-, interim, and post-testing using writing samples and/or other qualitative assessment instruments and/or
2. a core writing assignment (or assignments) common to all Gen Ed E courses and involving concepts and terms common to all E offerings

The assessment instrument(s) will:

• pose a moral or ethical question or situation with practical application to students' personal experience
• require students to present and explain a problem-solving response to the question/situation
• require a comparative perspective by asking for two or more practicable responses to the question/situation, either by the student (at different stages of experience or learning) or by respondents from different cultures (and/or times)