General education courses will be getting a facelift in the next four years.

All general education courses are going through a re-certification process. Any course that has not been re-certified by January 2004 will have its general education designation dropped.

The main change in the general education criteria is that the university is looking for elements of active learning in each general education course, said Lou Geschwindner, chair of the general education subcommittee and chair of the committee on curricular affairs.

Students will actually take part in their learning and get involved in learning instead of simply listening to a lecture with the active learning element, Geschwindner said.

"Active learning will try to bring experience into the classroom — the experience of actually doing something," he said.

"(Students) learn more if involved in their learning rather than sitting there absorbing or not absorbing whatever is said to the group."

Thomas Litzinger, director of the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education and member of the General Education Assessment Interest Group, feels it's good to have active learning in any class.

An example of active learning in engineering classes is problem solving with an active approach. In the passive mode, the instructor would solve a problem on the board while students write it down. In the active mode, the instructor would do an example on the board and then give students a problem to solve in class that they would work on in pairs. This way, the instructor is right there in the class to work through the problems with the students.

Students get more involved in Litzinger classes when active learning is incorporated.

"Students start working on (problems) and I have to tell them it's the end of class, time to leave," Litzinger said. "It engages them in a level that I've never been able to engage them in before."

Each department or college must submit proposals to the general education sub-committee of curricular affairs, stating how each general education course will include active learning. Many courses already incorporate an active learning element but now just have to state how they do it.

Some courses will need to work active learning into the curriculum or will lose its general education designation.

Active learning elements can include information gathering, like library research, and group projects where students work together to teach each other.

The extent to which the professor incorporates the active learning function is based on the needs of the particular class, Geschwindner said.

The review process of the course proposals has been somewhat of a struggle, he added. There have only been about 50 courses reviewed out of the 800 general education courses the university offers. There has recently been a reminder sent to college officials to let them know they are behind schedule and to give them a nudge, said Sherry Walk, university curriculum coordinator.

The delay may be attributed to trouble adding in active learning to certain classes. "It's difficult sometimes to figure out how to get them into the classroom and put them into the proposal so that the general education committee sees them," Geschwindner said.

The committee will offer feedback on proposals that aren't acceptable so that the professors understand what is missing so they can re-submit them.