FAQs

General education is a federal requirement for all undergraduate degree-granting institutions who receive Title IV funding (federal financial aid). This requirement is monitored and reviewed by accreditation agencies on behalf of the Department of Education. SMU is accredited by The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). SMU’s accreditation status was reaffirmed December 2021.

SMU adheres to SACSCOC Accrediting Standards 8.2.b and 9.3 of the Principles of Accreditation, which provide guidance on assessing general education. 

Standard 8.2 states: The institution identifies expected outcomes, assesses the extent to which it achieves these outcomes, and provides evidence of seeking improvement based on the analysis of the results in the areas below.

b.: student learning outcomes for collegiate-level general education competencies of its undergraduate degree programs. (Student outcome: general education).

Standard 9.3 states that a general education curriculum:

(a) is based on a coherent rationale.

(b) is a substantial component of each undergraduate degree program. For degree completion for… baccalaureate programs, a minimum of 30 semester hours of the equivalent.

(c) ensures breadth of knowledge. These credit hours include at least one course from each of the following areas: humanities/fine arts, social/behavioral sciences, and natural science/mathematics. These courses do not narrowly focus on those skills, techniques, and procedures specific to a particular occupation or profession.

Assessment is the systematic, continuous process of gathering, reviewing, and using data on student learning and other outcomes for the purpose of making improvements. Student learning outcomes assessment is an ongoing four‐step process of “establishing clear, measurable, expected outcomes of student learning; ensuring that students have sufficient opportunities to achieve those outcomes; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well student learning matches our expectations; and, using the resulting information to understand and improve student learning” (Suskie, 2009, p. 4).

Student learning outcomes assessment is not simply the process of assigning grades to students. Rather, it is defining, as a program, the central areas of student learning, looking at each of these areas independently to see if students are achieving them, and then examining ways to adjust teaching/learning practices to increase student achievement. Grades, whether course or exam, often reflect multiple student learning outcomes and therefore do not accurately reflect learning in one area.

Student learning outcomes assessment is also not an evaluation of faculty. Assessment is designed to look at learning through the student experience within a program. Although the measurement of a specific learning outcome might take place in one course, student learning typically takes place over the course of a curriculum and any deficiencies in student achievement should be considered programmatic in nature, not course‐based.

Overall, the assessment process at an institution is not just an exercise for accreditation purposes. For assessment to be effective, it must be ongoing and systematic. It is not just the implementation of improvements in programs or units, but following up on these actions to determine if additional steps are needed.

Generally, grading evaluates individual students’ learning and performance across an entire project or class. Although grades are sometimes treated as a proxy for student learning, they are not always a reliable measure. Moreover, they incorporate criteria – such as attendance, participation, and effort – that are not direct measures of learning. Even in single assignments or exams, it is not always the case that the entire assignment or exam is graded solely on the single criteria delineated in one Student Learning Outcome.

 

The goal of assessment is to improve student learning. Assignments and exams can be used both for grading and for assessment. But, assessment goes beyond grading by systematically examining student learning on very specific criteria which are often more narrow than the scope of a long research report or a final cumulative exam. Assessment of individual SLOs specific to General Education or to an entire academic program should result in clear, measure of learning on one SLO. That discreet measure can then be used to inform improvement in the delivery of information in a class or in a series of courses that make up a degree program.

Not necessarily. Faculty teaching a course within the Common Curriculum (CC) must create and collect from students an assessment assignment for each CC component. However, there are multiple submission options available to faculty during the regular terms and interterms.

SMU engages in a distributed general education model which means if you're teaching an undergraduate course, chances are you will need to assess a CC component.

IPE staff will send tailored notifications and instructions to faculty from assessment@smu.edu each term if assessment is required for your course. Although assessment of all components occurs for all courses each term offered, collection of student assessment work only occurs for each component on a cyclical basis.

Check the Course Search page to verify whether your course has any CC components.

Please refer to the instructions you received from assessment@smu.edu regarding CC assessment collection each term.

Set up your Canvas course at the beginning of the semester but do not link your assignment until instructed to do so via assessment@smu.edu.

Faculty who wait until the end of the semester will experience longer wait times from support staff due to a high volume of requests. The sooner you setup your course, the more time you will have to work with support staff to troubleshoot.

Review each CC component's rubric to establish an appropriate assessment assignment type.

NOTE: Group assignments are strongly discouraged unless an individual student's contribution to the group assignment is clearly demarcated.

You will submit ALL student evidence files you collected from your course(s) unless otherwise instructed.

No. Each CC component has defined student learning outcomes in the rubric. Faculty need to: (1) create the assignment in alignment with the appropriate Common Curriculum assessment rubric, and (2) link the assignment to the appropriate rubric only when directed by assessment@smu.edu.

Timing. During the regular terms, IPE staff are able to survey faculty after the term census date to identify the type of assessment assignment they will be employing and provide them with specific submission instructions. IPE staff subsequently allocate several weeks to the assessment assignment survey process to allow faculty ample time to determine what kind of assignment(s) they wish to use for the assessment. Given the short-term nature of the summer and inter-terms, IPE staff ability to survey faculty is exponentially shorter and surveying faculty to provide specific instructions is not possible.

Timing and resources. In addition to the short-term nature of the summer and interterm sessions, we also use a software, integrated with Canvas, called Anthology Portfolio (Portfolio). Portfolio is the "data warehouse" which collects student assessment assignment submissions from Canvas. At this time, it is cost-prohibitive to provide every undergraduate student with a Portfolio account because the cost structure is on a per-student basis.

Rather, IPE staff manually identify courses tagged with Common Curriculum components being assessed during the current academic year, and the students enrolled in those courses. Once identified, those students' data is loaded to Portfolio's system and their accounts activated. Given the relatively low course enrollments during the summer and interterm sessions, IPE staff collect assessment assignment submissions in either an objective or non-objective format, and then manually load the student's assignment submission or supporting skill scores into Portfolio on their behalf.

Yes. While we have a 4,500 annual limit on student Portfolio licenses (used in the Canvas Assignment linking process), there is a strong possibility that your student's account will be activated or reactivated at some point during the academic year. We conduct several cross-checks throughout the year to ensure that we use as many of the evidence files you provide as possible. This helps us provide the juried assessment raters with a robust and representative sample of student artifacts to evaluate.

The chart below provides a breakdown of faculty-provided artifacts shared via Box that we were able to use for the 2024-2025 academic year juried assessment process:

CC Component	Artifacts Loaded to Portfolio	% Used by Component	Artifacts Not Loaded to Portfolio	% Not Used by Component	Total Artifacts shared via Box Upload
CAA	521	90%	59	10%	580
CAC	433	82%	97	18%	530
CE	197	77%	58	23%	255
CIE	432	90%	50	10%	482
HC	739	80%	189	20%	928
LAI	763	83%	154	17%	917
PREI	505	71%	207	29%	712
Grand Total	3590	82%	814	18%	4404