General Education Requirements

FKL Objectives and Learning Outcomes

An effective university education must engage students with a diversity of ideas, concepts, and ways of acquiring knowledge. The Foundations of Knowledge and Learning (FKL) Core Curriculum at the University of South Florida emphasizes inquiry as the  means of developing complex intellectual skills that enable students to become critical thinkers, concerned citizens, successful professionals, and reflective people who throughout their lives are aware of, understand, and engage with the complexities and challenges that our global realities require.

The FKL Core Curriculum at the University of South Florida is designed to produce University graduates who will:

  • Understand symbolic, expressive, and interpretive communication systems in all of their complexities
  • Confront with an inquiring mind the natural, social, technical, and human world, and their interrelationships            
  • Understand theories and methodologies for producing knowledge and evaluating information
  • Interpret and understand human diversity in a global context
  • Discover and pursue a meaningful life, as well as being a responsible steward of the human and physical environment.

Objectives

  • Understand Symbolic, Expressive and Interpretive Communication Systems in All of their Complexities 
    1. Written: Students will demonstrate well-organized, well-developed papers that reflect appropriate use of language. They will demonstrate specific knowledge, critical and analytical abilities, and appropriate use of technology consistent with assignment objectives.                  
    2. Oral: Students will demonstrate well-organized, well-developed oral presentations that reflect appropriate use of language and technology consistent with assignment objectives.                  
    3. Other systems and forms: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the creative processes and experiences to be found within literature and the arts, and their relevance to culture by analysis, critical thinking, interpretation, performance, or other creative activity
  • Confront with an Inquiring Mind the Natural, Social, Technical and Human Worlds and their Interrelationships               
    1. Students will demonstrate an understanding of mathematics, the natural sciences and technology, including historical context and interrelationships with other disciplines.                 
    2.  Students will demonstrate an understanding of the social and behavioral sciences, including historical context and interrelationships with other disciplines.                  
    3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the arts and humanities, including historical context and interrelationships with other discipline.
  • Understand Theories and Methodologies for Producing Knowledge and Evaluating Information              
    1.  Students will demonstrate a general understanding of theories and methods of producing knowledge.                  
    2. Students will demonstrate critical thinking and analytical abilities, including the capacities to engage in inductive and deductive thinking and quantitative reasoning, and to construct sound arguments.                  
    3. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the scientific process. Students will demonstrate an understanding of historical process.
    4. Students will demonstrate information literacy skills including: identifying appropriate questions, problems, or issues; determining appropriate sources of information; locating and evaluating necessary information; and analyzing, synthesizing, and applying the knowledge gained
  • Interpret and Understand Human Diversity in a Global Context   
    1. Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of the local and global processes that historically influence and help to define human differences. These might be expressed in biological, social, or cultural terms and include aesthetic, economic, gender, linguistic, political, religious, and other differences.                 
    2.  Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of how these differences have influenced the relative rights and responsibilities (e.g., issues of social justice, discrimination, and exploitation) accorded to individuals and groups within human societies, and how the actions of individuals and groups in one society affect life in another.                 
    3.  Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of theories (e.g., economic development, language, race, and gender) as to how these differences might affect the way(s) in which an individual or a group experiences and interprets the world.                  
    4. Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of the role of language in forming cultural identities.
  • Discover and Pursue a Meaningful Life as well as Being a Responsible Steward of the Human and Physical Environment               
    1. Students will demonstrate an understanding of how their decisions and actions affect the human and physical environment.                  
    2. Students will demonstrate a critical understanding of local and global processes that reveal culturally different ways of pursuing a meaningful life, and of how such differences affect the environment.                  
    3. Students will demonstrate intellectual development that emphasizes active involvement in the learning process methods of formulating answers that support retention of critical facts and concepts.

Learning Outcomes

The Core Curriculum presents the knowledge, skills, and understandings that are expected of all individuals who graduate from USF, including transfer students. Learning outcomes were developed by the USF General Education Council to address each of the Core Areas in the FKL Core Curriculum and the dimensions that all students will experience as  part of this program. These outcomes will be assessed as a measure of student learning throughout the program.

  1. Students will be able to critically evaluate information in light of its logical consistency,evidence, and justification of conclusions, analyze and explain relationships between presented information and concepts; uncover underlying assumptions and arguments, and consider multiple hypotheses and interpretations before formulating opinions.            
  2. Students will produce well-organized, well-developed papers that reflect appropriate use of language to achieve a specific purpose and addresses a specific audience.           
  3. Students will be able to explain or demonstrate artistic or human expression.
  4. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the diversity of human experiences.
  5. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the complexity and dynamic nature of local and global processes (e.g., social, political, economic systems).            
  6. Students will demonstrate an ability to use graphical, symbolic, and numerical methods to analyze, organize, and interpret natural phenomena.            
  7. Students will demonstrate an understanding of the scientific process, including hypothesis formulation and testing, identifying relevant variables, and evaluating the appropriateness of research designs.            
  8. Students will demonstrate the ability to describe historical events and multiple interpretations of historical events using arguments supported by appropriate historical evidence.