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Student Learning Outcomes

The First-Year Seminar is designed to ensure that first-time freshmen at UL Lafayette succeed in making the transition to college and career readiness, fully prepared to succeed in their academic courses and aware of the multitude of resources available to them on campus. As such, the student learning outcomes for UNIV 100 are as follows.

Cognitive Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)* will include:

  1. Critical thinking and problem solving: the course will focus on a central theme or topic that asks the students to engage in University-level inquiry that challenges them to formulate appropriate questions, investigate potential answers, and arrive (at least tentatively) at solutions.
  2. Oral and Written Communication Skills: students will state clearly and defend orally and in writing their ideas, arguments, and research questions.
  3. Information Literacy: students will independently investigate answers to questions posed in the course, learning to find information, and to critically assess the relevance and value of that information vis-à-vis the questions posed, as well as to formulate new questions based on the initial inquiry.
  4. In addition, the learning outcomes for UNIV 100 will include a multi-faceted set of learning outcomes that can be summarized in the nomenclature of College and Career Readiness. Students will:
  • gain an understanding of the philosophy, function, and value of the General Education curriculum in the overall context of their degree program;
  • gain an understanding of their own career goals and the relation of these to their choice of major and to General Education;
  • identify—and utilize when appropriate—available student services and locations of support units offering academic assistance, health and wellness support, financial aid, technology resources, and career counseling;
  • know and apply time management techniques and effective learning strategies.

In addition (at the instructor’s discretion and with relevant expertise/experience), the following learning outcomes may be included:

  1. Community Engagement and Service Learning: the course will provide to students an understanding of their location in community and foster in them a desire to contribute to the community in a meaningful way.
  2. Global Competence:  the course will allow students to reflect on the global implications of the course topic and, through the process of exposure to cultural diversity, to develop strategies for intercultural understanding and communication.

Please note that the Office of the First-Year Experience will offer professional development, teaching materials, and support for all instructors to assist in facilitating student learning of the above-mentioned outcomes.

* Courses designated as Honors sections must place significant emphasis on the first three SLOs. Students in these sections will receive Honors credit for the course and will be expected to complete significant projects that involve independent research and culminate in formal presentations (either written or oral). The projects may be either individual or group projects.