A Brief History of General Education at OCC
General Education has always been an integral part of the degrees issued by Oakland Community College. Initially, the purpose of the General Education courses was to expose students to the essential elements, viewpoints, and cultural contributions of a wide variety of academic disciplines (American Government, Communication, English, Fine Arts/Humanities, Math/Science, Physical Education, and Social Sciences).
The original role of General Education was expanded significantly in 1999, when OCC’s faculty approved ten General Education attributes to be taught in General Education classes.
Subsequently, in April of 2007, the OCC College Academic Senate approved a motion to rename the "General Education Attributes” as “Outcomes.” This action was taken since the term “outcomes” is a more nationally recognized concept and generally it is easier to assess student learning in terms of “outcomes” than “attributes.” At the same time the College Academic Senate adopted a revised set of outcomes.
With the addition of these outcomes, faculty teaching General Education courses were expected to teach the subject matter of their course, along with providing students with an in-depth understanding of the skills and components of one or more of nine key lifelong outcomes:
- Aesthetic Awareness
- Communicate Effectively - Speaking and Writing
- Critical Thinking
- Global Understanding and Responsibility
- Information Literacy
- Personal Development
- Quantitative Literacy
- Scientific Literacy
- Social Responsibility
While no single General Education course was expected to provide students with an in-depth exposure to all of the General Education outcomes, it was expected that every General Education class would model each outcome to some degree.
