Institutional Learning Objectives
CSU’s Institutional Learning Objectives (ILOs) represent the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that a CSU experience fosters for its students across academic courses, degree programs, co-curricular experiences, and student services. ILOs represent the educational values of the institution and are the collective expression of the learning environment at CSU.
The ILOs provide guidance to academic, student support, and student affairs programs in the development of learning outcomes, and to provide a framework for decision-making about educational programming. The ILOs are conceptually linked to CSU’s Principles of Community, supporting student growth across all institutional programming in inclusion, respect, integrity, service, and social justice.
Institutional Learning Objectives
Full Report
Creativity
Education for creativity includes the development of an understanding of the ways in which the arts and sciences support expression of the diversity of the human experience and human community, and the development of the ability to apply creative skills in problem solving; it stimulates the imagination to inform new ways of understanding our place in the world and contributes to innovative solutions addressing the challenges we face locally and globally.
Reasoning
Education for reasoning includes the development and application of logic, analytic and synthetic skills, the reflective discovery and use of information, the ability to identify and understand problems, ask effective questions, understand and apply ethical principles appropriate to the task(s) and communities at hand, and the application of requisite knowledge and skills as part of multidisciplinary approaches to key challenges at all levels of society.
Communication
Education for personal and professional expression includes the development of written and oral communication skills for technical, professional, and public audiences. These skills include developing the capacity to listen substantively and communicate effectively and respectfully in settings where a variety of viewpoints, cultures, identities, and objectives may intersect; skills central to effective and equitable communication in a diverse society.
Responsibility
Education for personal and social responsibility is built upon an understanding of the social and educational advantages of viewpoint diversity and the ability to learn from those with perspectives, histories, cultures, and identities different from our own. Personal and social responsibility involves shared deliberation on the just ordering of political and legal systems, the presence of and options for responding to systemic barriers to equity and inclusiveness, and an understanding of the interconnectedness of societies worldwide. Finally, personal and social responsibility also includes understanding and being able to articulate and justify the values and principles involved in personal decision-making, taking responsibility for our own actions, speech, and reasoned convictions, engaging in critical reflection, and as warranted, self-correction or principled dissent; as well as understanding and participating in relevant governance systems.
Collaboration
Education for collaboration is oriented toward the effective and sustainable stewardship of human, economic, and environmental resources. This involves developing cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships with others; understanding of the advantages of shared discourse, open inquiry, and constructive disagreement regarding proposed solutions to social problems; demonstrating skill in guiding and assisting a group, organization, or community in meeting its goals; understanding the dynamics of a group and exhibiting democratic principles as a leader or group member; and communicating a vision, mission, or purpose that encourages commitment and action in others.