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PLO-ULO Alignment Guidelines

The following guidance was provided by the General Education Committee in May of 2023.

How does your program reinforce Boise State’s University Learning Outcomes?

Boise State’s University Learning Outcomes address the common learning goals that we have for every graduating student, regardless of major. In 2011, Boise State faculty identified these outcomes as the essential intellectual skills that lie at the heart of what it means to be an educated person. And  many employers rate these outcomes as equal to or more important than more targeted, career-specific skills.

  • Written Communication: Use flexible writing process strategies to generate, develop, revise, edit, and proofread texts.
  • Oral Communication: Communicate effectively in speech, both as a speaker and listener.
  • Critical Inquiry: Engage in effective critical inquiry by defining problems, gathering and evaluating evidence, and determining the adequacy of argumentative discourse.
  • Ethics: Analyze ethical issues in personal, professional, and civic life and produce reasoned evaluations of competing value systems and ethical claims.
  • Diversity: Apply knowledge of diversity and systems of inequality to address social issues of local and global importance.

These university-level outcomes are the focus of certain courses within Boise State’s general education program. But for many students, solid achievement of the University Learning Outcomes may only come if the outcomes are also reinforced later with the major.

The University Learning Outcome section of the PAR curriculum map is meant to help programs and the General Education Committee understand where the University Learning Outcomes are being reinforced within Boise State’s degree programs. The bottom portion of the curriculum map first asks you to indicate whether a ULO is “aligned” with a PLO, then asks you to map where those “aligned” Program Learning Outcomes appear in your program.

What does it mean for a Program Learning Outcome  to be aligned with a University Learning Outcome?

Mark a Program Learning Outcome (PLO) as “aligned” to a University Learning Outcome (ULO) if the PLO addresses at least two of the ULO’s achievement criteria. The level of emphasis within individual courses can (and should) vary. The goal is to support students in drawing connections between their disciplinary coursework and the ULOs across their degree program, striving toward mastery by the time they reach their Finishing Foundations course.

Oral Communication ULO Criteria

  1. Information Resources, Structures: Research, discover, and develop information resources and structure spoken messages to increase knowledge and understanding.
  2. Reasoning & Persuasive Appeals: Research, discover and develop evidence-based reasoning and persuasive appeals for ethically influencing attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors.
  3. Adapt Spoken Messages to diverse Contexts: Adapt spoken messages to the diverse personal, ideological, and emotional needs of individuals, groups, or contexts.
  4. Effective Verbal & Nonverbal Behaviors that Promote Self-efficacy: Employ effective spoken and nonverbal behaviors that support communication goals and illustrate self-efficacy.
  5.  Listen to Critically Evaluate Self & Others: Listen in order to effectively and critically evaluate the reasoning, evidence, and communication strategies of self and others.

ULO Criteria

Written Communication

Use flexible writing process strategies to generate, develop, revise, edit, and proofread texts.

  1. Competency 1: Adopt strategies and genres that are appropriate to the rhetorical situation.
  2. Competency 2: Use inquiry-based strategies to conduct research that explores multiple and diverse ideas and perspectives, appropriate to the rhetorical context.
  3. Competency 3: Use rhetorically appropriate strategies to evaluate, represent, and respond to the ideas and research of others.
  4. Competency 4: Address readers’ biases and assumptions with well-developed evidence-based reasoning.
  5. Competency 5: Use appropriate conventions for integrating, citing, and documenting source material as well as for surface-level language and style.
  6. Competency 6: Read, interpret, and communicate key concepts in writing and rhetoric.
  7. Competency 7: Use reflection and self-evaluation to connect choices made in texts to audiences and purposes for which texts are intended.

Oral Communication:

Communicate effectively in speech, both as a speaker and listener.

  1. Information Resources, Structures: Research, discover, and develop information resources and structure spoken messages to increase knowledge and understanding.
  2. Reasoning & Persuasive Appeals: Research, discover, and develop evidence-based reasoning and persuasive appeals for ethically influencing attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors.
  3. Adapt Spoken Messages to Diverse Contexts: Adapt spoken messages to the diverse personal, ideological, and emotional needs of individuals, groups, or contexts.
  4. Effective Verbal & Nonverbal Behaviors that Promote Self-efficacy: Employ effective spoken and nonverbal behaviors that support communication goals and illustrate self-efficacy.
  5. Listen to Critically Evaluate Self & Others: Listen in order to effectively and critically evaluate the reasoning, evidence, and communication strategies of self and others.
  6. Key Theories & Concepts in Communication Discipline: Understand key theories, perspectives, principles, and concepts in the Communication discipline, as applied to oral communication.

Critical Inquiry

Engage in effective critical inquiry by defining problems, gathering and evaluating evidence, and determining the adequacy of argumentative discourse.

  1. Articulating the Problem/Question/Issue: Clearly identifies and describes the problem; explains how it fits within the discipline’s sphere of inquiry; describes multiple candidate approaches to addressing it.
  2. Collecting and Organizing Evidence/Data/Reasons: Adheres to and clearly explains/justifies disciplinary best practices with respect to thoroughness and accuracy of data collection (examples: literature review, fieldwork, surveys, experimental procedures).
  3. Evaluative Reasoning: Accurately diagnoses failures of reasoning and clearly distinguishes different grades of reasoning quality according to discipline-specific evaluative standards.
  4. Demonstrative Reasoning: Makes effective use of evidence and principles to produce chains of reasoning that are of superior quality, as determined by discipline-specific evaluative standards.

Ethics

Analyze ethical issues in personal, professional, and civic life and produce reasoned evaluations of competing value systems and ethical claims.

  1. Understanding Ethical Frameworks: Clearly and thoroughly describes multiple ethical frameworks and explains their relationship and relevance to one another.
  2. Analyzing Ethical Issues: Identifies and accurately describes an issue of ethical interest; poses multiple, thoughtful questions relevant to addressing the issue and explains how such questions might be answered from a given ethical framework.
  3. Ethical Reasoning: Cogently applies a given ethical framework to an issue in order to state a reasoned position; thoughtfully responds to potential objections/additions from different viewpoints.
  4. Ethical Self-Awareness: Identifies and clearly explains one’s core principles and/or values, provides compelling reasons for holding them, and thoughtfully considers their potential implications for oneself and one’s community.

Diversity

Apply knowledge of diversity to address social issues of local, regional, national, and/or global importance.

  1. Knowledge of Diversity: Demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of individual identities, perspectives, and their social interactions.
  2. Analyzing Social Issues: Explains clearly and thoroughly how a given social issue or set of issues (economic, political, religious, environmental, etc.) is informed by diverse identities, perspectives, and their social interactions.
  3. Applying Knowledge of Diversity to Social Issues: Evaluates different approaches to a given social issue (or set of issues) and suggests reasoned steps to work toward a common goal by applying cultural awareness and knowledge of diversity.
  4. Cultural Self-Awareness: Describes one’s own intersecting identities in nuanced ways and thoughtfully assesses how they shape one’s own cultural expectations and biases.

Download a PDF version of the PLO-ULO alignment guidelines here.