Collective Course Statement: How We Met Learning Outcomes Working Through It

On the Geneseo website, Geneseo’s Mission Statement is followed by GLOBE: Geneseo Learning Outcomes for Baccalaureate Education. These learning outcomes are sought after by all professors in all academic fields at Geneseo. In crafting our final collective course statement, which relates GLOBE and the work we’ve done in class concerning medical voluntourism, we are informing prospective study abroad students about the implications their travel will have on the indigenous people they seek to help. There are many motivations for going abroad, some are intrinsic and some self-seeking and career related. Nonetheless, motivation is less important than the actual results.

 

In working together in individual groups, and ultimately as a collective group, we demonstrated key learning outcomes as they are presented on the website. The eight outcomes highlighted are as follows:

  1. Critical Thinking
  2. Communication
  3. Quantitative, Computational, and Symbolic Reasoning
  4. Informational and Digital Literacy
  5. Creativity and Creative Thinking
  6. Leadership and Collaboration
  7. Diversity and Pluralism
  8. Global Awareness and Engagement

This end of year assignment deals with numbers 1,2,5,6,7 and 8 specifically. Assessing these learning outcomes through this assignment actually improves these skills, in a meta way. Most of the course statement is about medical voluntourism as we refer to various readings throughout the semester. Taking this information and regurgitating it for future study abroad students in a concise way where students understand and respect the indigenous populations requires critical thinking. Communication skills were also central to this assignment as taking the thoughts of over 25 students and condensing it into less than two pages of concise information required communication among sub groups as well as communication between these groups, and ultimately all students in the class at the end. Combining all this information in a cohesive way also required creativity as well as leadership and collaboration. This collective statement is a collaboration in itself and through group work, people had to display leadership (being scribes in group discussions) as well as a respect for the leaders. As there is a diversity of opinion and experience across the class, coming together was essential. The most operative learning outcome, global awareness and engagement, was developed through the content of the statement itself. Shaping what it requires to be a good global citizen when voluntouring was central to the statement, and this is the skill that was most notably improved on for me because other assignments had dealt with the other outcomes where global awareness and engagement is rarely, if ever the focus, of my English and Psychology courses. All skills listed above are important and were mostly honed through the development of the course statement, however the final one was most significantly improved.

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