The General Education (GE) curriculum serves all of the university's undergraduate students. As a result, all GE courses are to meet these standards. There are different design and instructor requirements for courses delivered online versus face-to-face.
These standards apply to all General Education courses, both online and traditional.
Three-Credit Standard - General Education courses are 3-credits, except for lab and major-specific needs.
Engaged Time Requirement - Academic units offering courses for Concordia University, St. Paul academic credit must adhere to the federal definition of a credit hour for the assignment of credit hours earned per course. Using this definition, student instruction and out-of-class work will typically not be less than 45 hours per credit hour per course.
Prerequisites - Due to their introductory focus, general education courses may not require prerequisites, except placement in English (writing) and Math.
Online Course Design Teams - Design teams led by Curriculum and Instruction Center (C&I Center), with faculty serving as Subject Matter Experts, will revise or create the online General Education courses.
Traditional Course Design - Faculty designing traditional General Education courses will consult at the beginning of the design process with the Curriculum and Instruction Center.
Career Exploration - General Education courses will include career exploration components, giving students an opportunity to explore careers in a particular field or discipline.
Accessibility - General Education courses will use Ally, an accessibility tool, to increase the accessibility of digital course content.
Common Rubrics - All assignments will incorporate grading rubrics specific to their course's design principles.
General Education Assessment - General Education courses will include the assessment of university-assigned General Education outcomes.
Primary Course - All General Education courses will be designed and delivered within the primary course model.
Course Review - The Curriculum & Instruction Center will review all General Education primary courses to ensure course design requirements.
Course material affordability - Whenever possible, courses will be designed with no-cost course materials that are sustainable and copyright-compliant. The Library and the Curriculum and Instruction Center will help guide this process.
These standards apply to online General Education courses and build on the above standards.
Course designers are to design courses to promote regular and substantive interaction between students and faculty. To this end, courses will typically include
Integration of weekly faculty interaction with students
Development of a weekly communication plan to guide faculty interactions
Inclusion of weekly automatic announcements, highlighting of key academic material and course milestones.
Examples of faculty interaction may include but are not limited to
Announcements, emails, or social media check-ins initiated by the instructor about aspects of the course, additional guidance, etc.
Optional synchronous activities.
Facilitating a study group or online discussion forum.
Course instructors will:
Provide grading and assignment feedback to student assignments typically within one week, recognizing that large projects, like capstones and dissertations, may require adjusted and communicated feedback timelines.
Respond to student inquiries normally within 24 hours (weekday) to 48 hours (weekend).
Typically follow up on a weekly basis with students struggling to academically succeed as determined through observation of course activity, and assessment completion, and offer additional opportunities for interaction.
Throughout the week, monitor and facilitate student engagement within the LMS (i.e. discussion boards or other tools used to promote student-to-student interaction).
Engage students, usually a minimum of four days per week, through the LMS and other course tools.
Implement the course's weekly academic communication plan.
Students should be given three opportunities to meet student learning outcomes.
Content should scaffold
Clear communication of career relevancy - need clear measurements.
Rubrics created and used for each assignment - DB Rubrics, Papers, etc. - embedded in Bb.
Open educational resources used to reduce cost
Incorporate time estimates for assignments.
Maximum of Two Discussion Board questions per week.
Community Space: One related to content and one community building. Because gen eds will likely have new students, topics for the community building DB should be related to time management, CSP support, balancing life, wellness, etc. Goal is to reduce anxiety, share common experiences and increase student success.
This process applies to the development of traditional face-to-face General Education courses and builds on the above standards.
The C&I team will conduct an initial course review based on the Course Design Rubric and instructional design best practices. The review will provide actionable feedback categorized into priority levels:
| Priority Level | Action | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | Required |
|
| High | Strongly Recommended |
|
| Medium | Recommended |
|
| Low | Optional Enhancement |
|
After a course has been redesigned and run for a semester, the C&I team will conduct another course review. The results of this review will be combined with instructor and student feedback to make adjustments to the design of the course.
The C&I team is available throughout the redesign process to provide feedback and guidance on course design, assessment creation, student engagement strategies, and in locating supplemental course materials.
Course writers will collaborate with the C&I and Library teams to select course materials that provide no-cost or low-cost access to required course materials. See Course material selection for General Education courses
All credit-bearing university courses are to include a required assignment submission, quiz submission, or discussion post in My Courses, the university’s LMS, by 11:59 PM the first Wednesday of each term. Instructors will also ensure this activity is available on the first day of the course. Surveys, self-assessments, checklists, or other activities in My Courses do not meet the requirement. The university requires courses delivered in all modalities to include the submission requirement.
This requirement enables the university to meet U.S. Department of Education requirements to verify course engagement. Utilization of the LMS in this process enables instructors and advisors to monitor initial course engagement by each student. Advisors will be in contact with students who do not complete the initial requirement. Faculty should also follow up with students who do not submit as in the normal practice.
This requirement helps advisors encourage students to participate in courses they intend to stay in and withdraw from the ones they do not. It also helps minimize back-and-forth communication between instructors and advisors. Beyond the academic implications, engagement decisions made by students early in the term have substantive financial implications.
While the requirement may be low-stakes, it does not need to be "extra" on the part of instructors and students. It should not be labeled as a "Student Engagement Requirement." For example, if the course requires discussion boards, make the first post of the Week 1 Discussion due by 11:59 PM the first Wednesday of the course. Another way is to make a syllabus quiz or quiz acknowledging course policies due by the Wednesday deadline. Students could also submit a practice assignment or take a sample quiz with fun icebreaker questions to help familiarize themselves with My Courses.
The Curriculum and Instruction Center supports this policy with examples and other resources for both CSP and CSP Global courses:
Questions on LMS implementation? Please reach out to cic@csp.edu.
Get Help
For help with Blackboard or Brightspace, email us at lms@csp.edu.
For help with course or instructional design, email us at cic@csp.edu.
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