Starting this week, as part of the University’s ongoing evaluation of its core curriculum, several seniors will attend five seminar-style classes to provide feedback on their experiences in general education classes at Georgetown.
Father Christopher Steck, who is moderating the sessions with Dr. Randall Bass, executive director of the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, said that the class serves as a “sounding board” for students.
Steck and Bass are the leaders of a faculty-only committee that is evaluating the University’s general education requirements. Both the class, a tutorial for which students may choose to earn one credit hour, and a CNDLS survey of juniors and seniors are part of the committee’s plan to elicit student opinions.
“There’s a big push for assessment,” said Steck. “Anybody who’s not doing this is probably behind the game … It’s very hard to measure what quality of education students are receiving … To be able to assess something, you need to know … where the goals are.”
The committee is attempting to form concrete ideas about these goals while also focusing on active learning and the integration of new technologies in education.
After the tutorial ends, student participants like Colin Brody (COL ’11) will lead their own focus groups of 10 to 15 students in discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of the general education curriculum.
Though the process is ongoing, students have so far expressed desire for more first-year seminars, more interdisciplinary courses, and more student research opportunities, among other things.
Brody said that participants in the tutorial have also been researching curricula at other universities around the country in an attempt to develop a list of potential changes to Georgetown’s curriculum.
“[I] believe that there are very good parts of the general education curriculum and there are parts that can be improved,” Brody said.
