First Year Seminar classes are framed around academic topics of which their instructors have professional expertise and a passion for teaching. First Year Seminar instructors design their classes with activities and assignments that align with the following expectations and learning goals.
Expectations for Instructors
These expectations, which are not subject to program-level assessment, require class activities but not graded assignments.
E1. Expose Students to University Resources and Activities
- Evidence of Success: Students will be able to identify and locate various resources available to them at Appalachian, and recognize opportunities for becoming involved in university life and within the community.
E2. Expose Students to Explicit Expectations for College-Level Work
- Evidence of Success: Students will understand the time and effort required during and outside class meetings to achieve success in college, complete work with deadlines, and apply previous learning to demonstrate comprehension and perspectives about education and life.
E3. Expose Students to the Purpose of a Liberal Arts Education
- Evidence of Success: Students will understand how a liberal arts education will help prepare them for the complexities and transitions of a life of civic engagement, cultivate their intellect and imagination, and develop transferable life skills.
E4. Engage Students with the Common Reading Book
- Evidence of Success: Students will engage critically with the common reading book, build topical and global knowledge based on the book, and be involved in a civil discourse about contemporary issues related to the book with diverse members of the university community.
Learning Goals for Students
These learning goals, which are subject to program-level assessment, require class activities and also graded assignments that provide opportunities for students to develop the skills while receiving meaningful and evaluative individual feedback from their instructors.
G1. Think Critically and Creatively
- Student Learning Outcomes: Students will question based on information, allow for alternate possibilities, reason following coherent sequences, evaluate and organize information, utilize novel ideas or types of evaluation, rely on appropriate evidence and methodologies to support conclusions, and use empirically derived evidence to address problems.
G2. Communicate Effectively
- Student Learning Outcomes: Students will identify the purpose of their message and aspects of their audience and sources, demonstrate an awareness of diverse viewpoints and the scope of their assumptions, organize their message, use appropriate modes of communication, follow conventions of the discipline, and maintain audience engagement.
G3. Develop Intercultural Competence
- Student Learning Outcomes: Students will be aware of their own cultural rules and biases, understand the complexity of elements important to other cultures, view others through their own cultural worldview, understand cultural differences in communication, demonstrate interest in other cultures, and be receptive to interacting with other cultures.
G4. Develop Information Literacy Competence
- Student Learning Outcomes: Students will use multiple sources to investigate a topic, utilize appropriate search strategies to locate sources, identify criteria and characteristics for authority to determine the credibility of sources, and demonstrate proper attribution and citation to credit and acknowledge the original ideas of others.