The Essential Learning Outcomes Of A Liberal Arts Education

MCLA is a small university campus that values close interactions among students, faculty, and staff through the integration of liberal arts and professional programs with co-curricular activities that support students’ development.

In the context of this caring environment, a practical and interdisciplinary education challenges students to develop themselves as thinkers, readers, writers, communicators, and problem solvers.  Moreover, the MCLA liberal arts education prepares students for professional and personal success in a diverse world.  The liberal arts education helps students to think critically and to make informed, self-directed decisions, which will prepare them for lives of civic responsibility.

Throughout your undergraduate experience you will strive to refine your way of thinking. You will hone your ability to conduct independent research and to advance worthy projects in collaboration with others serving as both a leader and as a collaborator. To understand the use of and strengthen these intellectual skills, you will participate in a dynamic mix of experiences -- courses and extracurricular experiences. The combination of these experiences will yield projects and other work such as performances, group projects and presentations that mark or signal particular facility and intellectual capacity. This is a truly wonderful process.

MCLA uses the LEAP outcomes to identify the overreaching outcomes of our education and culmination of the many elements of the students’ experiences. This ePortfolio serves as an electronic file of the evidence of your learning or, more aptly, your application of the knowledge gained. The ePortfolio complements your academic transcript in a very powerful way. The ePortfolio presents the evidence of what you can do. And importantly, you own your own ePortfolio, and are free to modify and build from the structure we’ve provided.
 
Every MCLA student starts the ePortfolio at the beginning of his/her work, initially with a few basic structured parts: resume, goals, etc. As you broaden your experiences, encounter and engage more and more courses, group projects, travel, service, research, creative work and performances, you will add to these basic elements. For example, when you participate in a service program you may include observations and reflections on this service, ultimately grappling with and responding to questions of its worth and meaningfulness.

Check out one model of an MCLA student ePortfolio by RJ Doughty.  Your ePortfolio will, of course, be unique to your profile. But it will align with the requisite intellectual outcomes of the liberal arts.

As an MCLA student you should be adding to your ePortfolio at least twice each semester. In some cases you will be updating; at other times you will be adding new work. The LEAP goals provide a guide to support your own learning map as you chart your own progress. These intellectual learning outcomes help to channel your thinking about essential learning. The LEAP Goals are:

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World
    •    Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences,
 humanities, histories, languages, and the arts.  Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary 
and enduring.

Intellectual and Practical Skills, including
    •    Inquiry and analysis
    •    Critical and creative thinking
    •    Written and oral communication
    •    Quantitative literacy
    •    Information literacy
    •    Teamwork and problem solving
Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of 
progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance.

Personal and Social Responsibility, including
    •    Civic knowledge and engagement—local and global
    •    Intercultural knowledge and competence
    •    Ethical reasoning and action
    •    Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
Anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges.

Integrative Learning, including
    •    Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and
 specialized studies

Demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and
 responsibilities to new settings and complex problems.