Cultural Competence Discussion Group

•  These are a range of abilities that our college would like students to either acquire or develop as they proceed through either a degree sequence of courses or a transfer pattern of courses.
•  They are not abilities found in only one discipline but rather underlie the types of thinking in all of the disciplines.
•  Student not enrolled in a degree or transfer pattern will not be required to acquire / develop all of the ICC’s.

•  These Institutional Core Competencies would reside above the General Education requirements, so consequently, the ICCs would shape those General Education requirements, but they would not necessarily become those requirements.
•  So, we could have more specific (or detailed) GE requirements (example: 3 ICCs, but 7 areas of General Education)
•  The faculty would use the Institutional Core Competencies as a foundation to start from in reviewing the General Education requirements.

•  It has been many years since we have last reviewed our General Education requirements, but we should have reviewed them about 5 years ago.
•  Now that we are required to develop and implement Student Learning Outcomes, it seemed like a good idea to step back from the course level concerns and articulate what are the fundamental, over-arching (i.e. not discipline-specific) abilities and skills we teach here at De Anza.
•  Once we have determined in a conceptual realm those abilities (ICCs), then we need to examine the specific disciplines we want students to have exposure to while pursuing a degree or transfer path (the GEs). After that, we focus on the course level outcomes (SLOs) to measure student achievement of those objectives.
•  Colleges that have started from a bottom-up approach of articulating what are the course-specific skills & abilities (i.e. Student Learning Outcomes) wound up re-doing their work when they attempted to conceptualize their teaching in more abstract terms (at the GE and ICC levels). So, we’d like to avoid having to re-do this herculean effort.
  

•  Comprehend and interpret various types of written information.
•  Communicate ideas/information, values, and thoughts in writing.

•  Receive, attend to, interpret, and respond appropriately to verbal and/or nonverbal messages.
•  Organize ideas and communicate verbal or non-verbal messages appropriate to the audience and the situation.
•  Participate in conversations, discussions, and group activities.
•  Speak clearly and ask questions.

•  Develop skills, techniques, and competencies in a given expressive form.
•  Demonstrate an understanding of the diverse cultural contexts through which and from which works of creative expression are produced
•  Demonstrate creativity through performance, an exhibition, or distribution of  the creative work they produce

•  Recognize when information is necessary
•  Develop effective research strategies
•  Locate, retrieve and use information in a variety of formats
•  Critically evaluate and synthesize information
•  Determine and use the appropriate resources to produce the desired results
•  Use current technology to acquire, organize, analyze, and communicate information
•  Understand the social, legal, and ethical issues relating to information and its use.

•  Applying rules and principles to new situations and use them in a problem solving process
•  Differentiating between facts, assumptions, influences, and conclusions
•  drawing conclusions from information given
•  Translating the verbal/written concepts into symbolic form and vice versa.
•  Engaging in reasonable, reflective thinking with healthy skepticism.

•  Recognizing whether a problem exists
•  Identifying components of the problem or issue
•  Creating a plan of action to resolve the issue
•  Monitoring, evaluating, and revising when necessary

•  Applying basic numerical concepts, such as: whole numbers, percentages, and estimates
•  Interpreting/Developing tables, graphs, charts, and diagrams to explain concepts or ideas
•  Applying appropriate principles and formulas

•  Identifying the need for data
•  Collecting Information and obtaining data from various sources
•  Organizing, processing, and maintaining records of the information collected
•  Analyzing the information for relevance, credibility and accuracy
•  Synthesizing, evaluate and communicate the results
•  Determining which technology resources will produce the desired results

•  Lifestyle choices
•  Life goals
•  Career choices
•  Strategies to attain life goals
•  Ethical principles and act accordingly.
•  Self worth
•  Social awareness
•  Civic knowledge and engagement
•  Effective individual and collaborative work habits

•  Physically and mentally fit lifestyle patterns
•  Stress management techniques
•  Healthy and balanced nutritional habits
•  Interests, hobbies, pursuits that promote mental and physical health and growth

•  Define and shape the democratic process and actively participate.
•  Value and respect the rights and complexity of diverse peoples, cultures, and perspectives.
•  Demonstrate or articulate empathetic understanding of diverse social, political, and global human conditions.
•  Recognize important economic and political issues and values in one’s community, state, country and the world. 
•  Analyze the importance of the natural environment to human well-being and the impact of human activity on the sustainability of local, national, global environmental systems.
•  Assess and analyze the integration of social, political, economic and ecological systems and activities.