Rowan Core Literacies and Outcomes

In Spring 2020, the Rowan Core Committee approved a full rewrite of the Rowan Core outcomes. These new outcomes are listed below.

Rowan Core Outcomes (as of Spring 2020)

Artistic Literacy

Styles, Genres, Traditions and Theories – Students can demonstrate fluency with artistic styles, genres, traditions and theories within historical and cultural contexts.
Reflection – Students can reflect on their experience of works of art and artistic performances.
Analysis, Interpretation and Critique – Students can analyze, interpret or critique works of art and artistic performances.
Art, Self and Society – Students can explain the relationship of art to self and society.
Creative Process – Students can engage thoughtfully in the creative process.
Works and Performances – Students can create artistic works or performances.
Professional Standards – Students can make choices that show awareness of professional standards and conventions.

Communicative Literacy

Context, Audience and Purpose – Students can communicate in ways that are sensitive to context, audience and purpose.
Conventions – Students can navigate the conventions of various communities, genres, media and modes.
Analysis and Critique – Students can employ analytical and critical skills in their own communications and in their evaluation of others’ communications.
Content Expression – Students can produce cohesive, insightful work that demonstrates understanding of a subject.
Clear and Compelling Language – Students can use clear, compelling language to communicate meaning.
Team Communication – Students can communicate effectively in teams using written, verbal, and non-verbal communication skills: listening, providing feedback, fostering an inclusive climate, etc.
Ethical Communication – Students can display intellectual honesty, consideration of social consequences, and respect for the work of others in their communications.
Sources – Students can select credible, authoritative sources and integrate relevant information into their communications.

Global Literacy

Self-Reflection – Students can reflect critically on their own perspectives and cultural experiences.
Cultural Knowledge – Students can express their knowledge and understanding of another culture.
Global Structures – Students can describe and analyze the institutions, systems and forces of our interconnected, global society.
Global History – Students can describe and analyze the historical factors that have shaped societies and cultures.
Cultural Engagement – Students can navigate ambiguity and complexity through engagement in various cultural contexts (language learning, study abroad, dialogue, and other immersive experiences).
Sustainability – Students can identify sustainable social, environmental, and economic practices to implement in their communities and in their own lives.
Justice, Equity and Inclusion – Students can understand and promote social justice, equity and inclusion.

Humanistic Literacy

Historical Knowledge – Students can identify and explain developments in human history and thought.
Analysis – Students can analyze (e.g., perform close readings of) texts and other artifacts.
Theory – Students can apply theoretical approaches to their understanding of human experience.
Research – Students can find, organize and synthesize information in support of their research goals.
Critical Evaluation – Students can critically evaluate evidence and claims (e.g., raise objections, examine from multiple perspectives).
Argument – Students can develop a coherent, credible argument to defend a position.
Ethical Reasoning – Students can appraise the ethical dimensions of a situation and engage in ethical reasoning.

Quantitative Literacy

Quantitative Concepts – Students can explain mathematical and statistical concepts.
Calculation – Students can perform calculations to solve problems.
Algorithmic Thinking – Students can devise and employ a step-by-step process to solve a quantitative problem.
Representation – Students can convert quantitative information into various representations (e.g., equations, graphs, diagrams, tables).
Interpretation – Students can explain information presented in quantitative representations and make appropriate inferences based on that information.
Application – Students can make judgments and draw appropriate conclusions based on quantitative analysis, including recognizing the limits of the analysis.

Scientific Literacy

Foundational Knowledge – Students can explain scientific terms, concepts, facts, laws, theories, models, etc.
Procedures and Methods – Students can understand and apply the procedures and methods of science.
Experiments and Studies – Students can design and conduct scientific experiments and studies.
Interpretation and Analysis – Students can interpret scientific evidence, analyze data and draw appropriate conclusions.
Evaluation – Students can evaluate the quality and utility of published and current scientific work.
Application – Students can apply scientific thinking to real-world problems and policies.
Ethics – Students can identify and adhere to ethical practices in science.

Original Rowan Core Outcomes (prior to Spring 2020)

The Rowan Core outcomes that were in use prior to Spring 2020 are below. Until all courses have been converted to the new Rowan Core outcomes, these outcomes will appear on some course syllabi.

Artistic Literacy

Artistic literacy is the knowledge and understanding of the centrality of the arts and aesthetics to human existence. Art reflects, and artists respond to and interact with, their communities. Artistic literacy requires learning about and engaging in the creative and performing arts. Visual, verbal, physical and auditory expression will be informed by a study of historical and cultural contexts. Active experimental engagement, including critical analysis and evaluation, will foster an aesthetic sensibility, which includes cognitive and emotional responses.

Artistic Literacy Learning Outcomes:

Students can use vocabulary related to and names of practitioners of various styles, genres, and traditions.
Students can describe historical foundations, ideological dimensions and cultural practices.
Students can discuss professional and academic standards in the arts.
Students can explain the relationship of the arts to self and society (e.g., the interdependent relationship of artists and audiences; how art, ranging from popular to high art, is both a driver and product of culture).
Students can demonstrate how the body, voice and mind can be used to express the creative process.
Students can describe the role of critical theory in the arts.
Students can experience firsthand and reflect on works of art and artistic performances in several different genres.
Students can critique (i.e., describe, analyze, interpret, judge) various forms of expression that are rooted in diverse cultures, values systems, or historical contexts.
Students can apply and practice foundation creative techniques, such as visual, verbal, physical and auditory expression, through the creation of an original product or performance.

Communicative Literacy

Communicative literacy is the capacity to analyze, reflect on, and respond to diverse communication situations. This includes understanding the ways in which audience, context, and purpose shape acts of communication. Communicative literacy is demonstrated through fluency in various modes of communication and effective adaptation, invention, and choice of strategies for communication. Engagement in a range of communicative acts and experiences will cultivate critical awareness and ethical responsibility.

Communicative Literacy Learning Outcomes:

Students can compose texts that successfully respond to a variety of rhetorical situations and needs.
Students can investigate, discover, evaluate and incorporate information and ideas to create rhetorically adept messages.
Students can create messages in a variety of formats, modes, and genres, including visual and digital modes.
Students can articulate their rhetorical choices/strategies in response to the needs and expectations of audience, context, and purpose.
Students can identify and evaluate various format, modes, and genres of communication within their social context.
Students can identify, analyze, and evaluate the rhetorical strategies of complex texts.
Students can produce and analyze complex texts (written, oral and nonverbal) for a variety of purposes and demonstrate their understanding of rhetorical strategies, genres, and discourse community expectations, and well as the effect of evolving digital technologies on communication.
Students can investigate, discover, evaluate and incorporate information and ideas to create authentic messages.
Students can explain how different forms of communication are culturally constructed, meditated, and moderated and how their value and effects are situated in the global, the political, the social, the civic, and the personal.

Global Literacy

Global literacy is the ability to understand the complexities of one’s own society as well as the global community. This requires knowledge of the diversity of world cultures and recognition of the interdependence of the contemporary world. The extensive globalization of the world’s economies and societies reveals the limits of human and natural resources in a global context. Knowledge of the reciprocal nature of local and global conditions will produce an international perspective. Engagement will occur through the traditional curriculum as well as high impact, experiential learning, such as Study Abroad, internships, service, and other methods of active community engagement.

Global Literacy Learning Outcomes:

Students can demonstrate civic engagement by active participation and reflection.
Students can express their knowledge and understanding of another culture.
Students can describe connections between local and global communities.
Students can communicate their understanding of sustainability in social, cultural, ecological and/or economic milieus, both locally and globally.
Students can express connections between the self and community.
Students can explain the costs and benefits of globalization.
Students can reflect critically on their own cultural experiences, cross-cultural interactions, and the diverse cultural experiences of others.
Students can use comparative thinking to understand local/global connections in contemporary society on a range of cultural, political, economic and environmental issues.
Students can describe and appraise their civic engagement as active members and builders of multiple communities.

Humanistic Literacy

Humanistic literacy is the ability to understand how human experience is shaped by economic, political, literacy, socio-cultural, historical and other contexts. Humanistic literacy includes critical awareness of how dominant paradigms are created and shape human thinking and feeling. It also encompasses the ability to empathize with other times, places, cultures, and mindsets and to grasp the complexity of change and perspective. Active engagement involves the study ad interpretation of significant texts and artifacts to develop awareness and to use this awareness to make decisions and to initiate and react to change.

Humanistic Literacy Learning Outcomes:

Students can identify and describe major developments in human history and thought.
Students can identify major commonalities and differences in human societies.
Students can analyze and explain the factors, events, and developments that led to the contemporary world.
Students can locate and explain how basic concepts and/or paradigms of different disciplines can provide context for diverse interpretations of a present or past event.
Students can incorporate intellectual and social dimensions of human experience into an analysis of local and global contexts.
Students can explain the impact of geographic, ecological, political, economic, and socio-cultural contexts on human experience and activity.
Students can analyze the context and significance of a particular intellectual moment (e.g., prepares a debate or position paper).
Students can interpret texts and/or artifacts through multiple perspectives.
Students can evaluate claims, assess evidence, and exercise ethical standards to build a coherent argument on an event or topic.

Quantitative Literacy

Quantitative literacy is the ability to reason logically and to communicate mathematical ideas verbally, symbolically, and graphically. It means knowing fundamental concepts and techniques of mathematical principles and processes in order to see mathematical functions as quantitative relationships, to understand the concept of probability, and to estimate or approximate answers to questions. This knowledge provides a foundation for understanding how to construct logical arguments and how to make use of mathematical thinking. Quantitative literacy encourages appreciation of mathematics as a practical tool as well as a philosophical and humanistic endeavor which helps to understand the world. Engagement in quantitative literacy includes analysis of the use of mathematics and the application of mathematical thinking and modeling to real-world problems.

Quantitative Literacy Learning Outcomes:

Students can define basic statistical and regression vocabulary and also qualitatively describe the meanings relative to a set of given data (e.g. mean vs. median, what does the standard deviation represent; correlation coefficients, and model parameters/coefficients).
Students can outline a logical solution to complex real-world problems through simplification to a mathematical model.
Students can describe the differences between continuous (e.g. measurable) and discrete (e.g. countable) quantities and how this affects how they can be analyzed.
Students can perform basic statistical and regression analyses on data and also qualitatively describe the meaning of the results (e.g. how they change as new data are added, limits of regression models and how they can infer correlation and/or causality).
Students can solve complex real-world problems through simplification to a mathematical model and then discuss how that model is affected by adding back in ignored complexities.
Students can perform basic analyses on both discrete and continuous data.
Students can communicate mathematical ideas in symbolic, graphic, oral and written forms.
Students can evaluate the appropriateness and limitations of deterministic and probabilistic models to make informed decisions in real world situations.
Students can apply algorithmic thinking to solve quantitative, real world problems.

Scientific Literacy

Scientific literacy is the understanding that science is systematic, evidence-based process of observation, modeling, and testing, to formulate and refine theories which not only explain but predict. Scientific literacy encompasses an appreciation of the role of science in society, technology, engineering, and mathematics. It includes recognition of the scientific knowledge, skills and values that promote informed evaluation of the validity of claims and proposed solutions to current problems. Scientific literacy does not necessarily involve the production of new science but rather it enables one to informed decisions and cooperative engagement in the protection and improvement of the world through scientific processes.

Scientific Literacy Learning Outcomes:

Students can demonstrate the ability to conduct scientific measurement and to discuss its limitation due to scientific error/uncertainty.
Students can conduct directed experiments including set-up, data collection, data analysis, and interpret results to either “discover” or verify scientific theory.
Students can demonstrate knowledge of core ideas and vocabulary of science and the scientific method in written and/or oral work.
Students can describe how to design an experiment to test competing hypotheses by manipulating and controlling variables.
Students can identify and explain a modern example of public policy drawing on scientific evidence.
Students can discuss the utility and limitations of scientific models.
Students can conduct, critique and design scientific studies following the standard scientific method.
Students can compose and critique scientific arguments as presented in both popular media and scientific literature as well as compose their own.
Students can apply scientific data to solve a real-world problem.

Rowan Core Literacies and Outcomes

Rowan Core Literacies and Outcomes