GVSU Student Learning Outcomes
Grand Valley State University has adopted the Essential Skills Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) of the General Education Program as institution-level SLOs for undergraduate students. These institutional-level SLOs include:
- Collaboration: Effectively work on a team.
- Creates an environment in which everyone feels they can contribute as well as constructively building on or synthesizing the contributions of others. Notices when someone is not participating and works to engage them. Provides a way to assess and address team members' concerns as the project proceeds.
- Participates in creating a plan that effectively utilizes members' strengths or helps them develop new skills, clearly articulates and allocates roles and tasks to meet deadlines, and establishes a mutually agreed upon accountability system.
- Completes all assigned tasks by the deadline, revising and adjusting plans as needed; proactively helps other team members complete their assigned tasks.
- Critical Thinking: Comprehensively evaluate issues, ideas, artifacts, or events before forming a conclusion.
- States an issue clearly and describes it comprehensively
- Develops a position or interpretation, based on evidence, that thoroughly takes into account the complexities of an issue, idea, artifact, or event, the limits of the position or interpretation, and other points of view.
- Develops conclusions, implications, and consequences that are logical and reflect an informed evaluation based on strength of evidence.
- Ethical Reasoning: Apply ethical principles and codes of conduct to decision making.
- Recognizes ethical issues when presented in a complex, multilayered (gray) context and can recognize interrelationships among the issues.
- Applies ethical theories or concepts to a complex issue accurately and considers the full implications of the application.
- States a position in-depth and effectively defends against other ethical perspectives.
- Information Literacy: Identify the need for information; access, evaluate, and use information effectively, ethically, and legally.
- Defines the scope of the research question or thesis with clarity and appropriate depth.
- Accesses information by using effective, well-designed search strategies and the most relevant research tools.
- Chooses a variety of quality sources appropriate to the scope and discipline of the research question, incorporating seminal works and essential theorists/thinkers by using multiple evaluative criteria.
- Organizes and synthesizes information from sources to fully achieve the intended purpose, with clarity and depth. Completely and accurately cites all information sources used.
- Integration: Apply knowledge from multiple disciplines to new, complex situations.
- Connects examples, facts, or theories from multiple disciplines and applies them to new, complex situations.
- Oral Communication: Effectively prepare and deliver a formal oral presentation.
- Organizes the presentation in a clear, consistent, and cohesive manner, while also stating a thesis that is compelling, precisely stated, appropriately repeated, and strongly linked to the supporting material.
- Uses language and delivery techniques that make the presentation compelling and the speaker appears polished and confident.
- Uses a variety of supporting materials that significantly enhances the presentation.
- Problem Solving: Design and evaluate an approach to answer an open-ended question or achieve a desired goal.
- Constructs a clear and insightful problem statement that includes all relevant contextual factors.
- Identifies multiple approaches for solving the problem that applies to a specific context.
- Proposes one or more solutions/hypotheses that are sensitive to contextual factors and the ethical, logical, and cultural dimensions of the problem.
- Quantitative Literacy: Work effectively with numerical data.
- Calculations are correct, solve the problem, and are presented clearly and concisely
- Skillfully converts data into an insightful mathematical portrayal in a way that contributes to a deeper understanding.
- Uses the quantitative analysis of data as the basis for deep and thoughtful judgments, drawing insightful, carefully qualified conclusions.
- Written Communication: Write effectively for multiple purposes and audiences.
- Uses writing skills to develop content that is relevant and compelling within the disciplinary field(s).
- Supports statements with reasoning and evidence from sources that are credible and appropriate within the disciplinary field(s) for a particular audience, purpose, and task.
- Uses words, phrases, sentences, and organizational structures typical of the task within the disciplinary field(s) to clearly and fluently communicate meaning to an intended reader.
More details on these Skills Learning Outcomes and their associated rubrics can be found on the General Education website.
Page last modified October 29, 2025