Essentials Learning Outcomes

The definition of success

JCC’s Essentials are designed to build your knowledge and skills in a number of different areas of learning. Our learning outcomes define what those areas of learning are.

What do learning outcomes have to do with your courses?

Instructors use these common goals when they plan course content. For example, if you’re taking a course approved for Cultural Understanding credit, the readings and assignments for that course are tailored to the Cultural Understanding goals. All JCC courses, no matter the subject area, sharpen skills in the areas of Critical Reasoning, Information Literacy, and Technological Competency.

Level 1 & throughout curriculum

Critical Reasoning

  • Develop well-reasoned conclusions based upon available information.
  • Identify, analyze, and evaluate ideas, data, and arguments as they occur in one’s own or others’ work.
  • Weigh diverse perspectives in the face of opposing viewpoints and understand the source of one’s own assumptions and biases.

Integrative Reasoning

  • Clearly articulate the various dimensions of an interdisciplinary issue or problem.

Information Literacy

  • Locate information effectively using tools appropriate to the need and discipline.
  • Evaluate information with an awareness of authority, validity, and bias.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the ethical dimensions of information use, creation, and dissemination.

Technological Competency

  • Effectively locate, gather, organize, interpret, and present data and ideas using the appropriate computer software.
  • Demonstrate the ability to use computers and other devices to effectively communicate electronically with others.

Values & Ethical Awareness

  • Recognize the importance of ethical behavior in fostering a community of mutual respect and dignity.

Level 2

Communication: Written (College Composition) & Oral

  • Demonstrate coherent college-level communication (written and oral) that informs, persuades, or otherwise engages with an audience.
  • Demonstrate the ability to revise and improve written and oral communication.
  • Research a topic, develop an argument, and organize supporting details.
  • Evaluate communication for substance, bias, and intended effect.

Mathematical Reasoning

  • Interpret and draw inferences from appropriate mathematical models such as formulas, graphs, tables, or schematics.
  • Represent mathematical information symbolically, visually, numerically, or verbally as appropriate.
  • Employ quantitative methods such as arithmetic, algebra, geometry, or statistics to solve problems.

Scientific Reasoning in the Natural Sciences

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the methods scientists use to explore natural phenomena, including observation, hypothesis development, measurement and data collection, experimentation, evaluation of evidence, and employment of data analysis or mathematical modeling; and
  • Demonstrate an understanding of how scientific data, concepts, and models are applied in one of the natural sciences.

Scientific Reasoning in the Social Sciences

  • Describe major concepts and theories of at least one discipline in the social sciences.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the methods social scientists use to explore social phenomena.

Cultural Understanding

  • Demonstrate understanding of cultural similarities and differences and how cultural norms shape each person’s experience of the world.

Level 3

Global Awareness

  • Demonstrate awareness of systemic global issues and the impact of individual and collective decisions on life around the world.

Diversity: Equity, Inclusion, & Social Justice

  • Describe the historical and contemporary societal factors that shape the development of diverse individual and group identities, including but not limited to race, class and gender.
  • Analyze the role that social structures and systems play in the creation and perpetuation of power, privilege, oppression, and opportunity.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of how the principles of rights, access, equity, and autonomy apply to social justice action, past, current, or future.

Applied Learning

  • Effectively apply knowledge and skills to a real-world experience, creative project, or independent intellectual investigation.
  • Thoughtfully reflect on connections between concepts studied in the classroom and insights gained from an applied learning experience/project.