Learning Ideals

CCBC has identified four Learning Ideals that will help students develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviors to be successful as intentional learners, to be productive as workers, and to be thoughtful, engaged citizens. Where feasible, individual non-General Education faculty and non-general education course-level committees are encouraged to incorporate CCBC’s Learning Ideals during lesson planning and course design processes. For example:

• Include the ideals as part of the program review process for each academic year.
• A course might be focused upon a single Learning Ideal.
• Each assignment within a course might be designed to focus upon a single Learning Ideal, so that considering all assignments in tandem, all Learning Ideals are targeted.
• Semester-to-semester course improvements can be made to include an additional Learning Ideal.
• Departmental mission statements might be drafted to include CCBC’s Learning Ideals.

Furthermore, individual non-General Education faculty and non-General Education course-level committees are encouraged, but not required, to design assessment tools to measure students’ development of Learning Ideals within their courses. For example:

• Formative assessments (e.g. weekly surveys) might be used to gauge students’ attainment of CCBC’s Learning Ideals.
• Assignment or project rubrics could be created which assess students’ attainment of CCBC’s Learning Ideals.
• Semester-end feedback from students could be garnished for students’ perspective regarding their attainment of CCBC’s Learning Ideals.

These Learning Ideals, as delineated below, stand in testament to CCBC’s mission, vision, and values. 

1. Growth, Agency, and Action

This Learning Ideal develops students’ inter-personal and intra-personal growth. In addition, this Learning Ideal is a “call to action.” Students will grow in their recognition that they hold the power to affect both self and community change, and their choices will be influenced by this recognition. This Learning Ideal enables a perspective of improvement, consistent with CCBC’s goals to transform lives and communities, inclusive of diverse cultures, multiple perspectives, and varied worldviews.

1. Agency and Application: Students will recognize that they have the ability to improve both themselves and their communities.  Students will recognize that personal action is a force for shaping lives, communities, and the world. Students will recognize how one’s own choices can affect patterns, ideas, and social systems.
2. Connecting to Community: Students will recognize the relationship of their actions and choices to the broader world. Students will evaluate one’s actions as connected to a local, national, and global landscape. Students will evaluate one’s position in social systems, will engage in the civic landscape, and will work toward common communal goals.
3. Activating Diverse Frameworks: Students will improve their abilities to function in diverse environments and will employ diverse methods for understanding, informed by a broad range of cultures and contexts.
4. Fostering Empathetic Understandings: Students will approach others with care, curiosity, and with a desire for understanding.  Students will improve their ability to empathize with others, understanding the interconnectedness of issues and solutions.

2. Dynamic Thinking

This Learning Ideal develops students’ ability to solve problems and to think creatively and curiously.  The four facets of this Learning Ideal provide a framework for CCBC students to master skills of reasoning in order to ask questions about the world around them, identify and describe problems, and develop and analyze potential solutions.

1. Curiosity: Students will develop their ability to use questioning, investigation, and research towards the development of novel solutions to conceptual and practical problems.
2. Creative Thinking: Students will interpretively and inventively use creative thinking, to develop potential solutions to contextual problems, via synthesizing and conceptualizing information, making inferences, and predicting outcomes.
3. Critical Thinking:  Students will analytically think through contextual problems, via gathering relevant information, ideas, and arguments to make sense of complex issues, to identify solutions to problems, and to evaluate outcomes.
4. Problem-Solving Skills: Students will create hypotheses to explore novel solutions to conceptual and practical problems, to test potential solutions, and to evaluate outcomes based upon environmental needs.

3. Working with Information

This Learning Ideal develops students’ ability to access and synthesize data, information, and signals from the outside world, towards the development of solutions to real world problems. CCBC embraces research as learning and affirms that information constructs are ways of operationally making sense of a complex and ever-changing world. This Learning Ideal also encompasses the value of intellectual humility in the face of infinite information. Still, with analytical and theoretical practice, data and information can be used to improve individuals and communities.

1. Quantitative Literacy: Students will confidently and accurately define and compute arithmetic values of measurement, including units, towards the development of solutions to real world problems.
2. Information Literacy: Students will critically, effectively, and responsibly access, use, and engage with information, towards the development of solutions to real world problems.
3. Epistemology and Experience: Students will identify ways of knowing, including scientific and theoretical methods, and will develop an appreciation for their own amassed knowledge, and for the experience and knowledge that others carry.
4. Technological Literacy: Students will adapt to and appreciate inevitable change, as well as understand the basics of contemporary computing and discipline-relevant technologies.

4. Interacting with People

This Learning Ideal develops students’ tolerance and appreciation for diversity among individuals and among groups.  Every pathway through life will involve exchange and collaboration between individuals and between cultures. Students will develop interpersonal skills that will enhance inclusiveness, respect, and empathy in their homes, workplaces, and communities. This Learning Ideal affirms the value of safe and open exchange of ideas, especially within environments with challenging group dynamics. Students will seek to make progressive and positive contributions that result in effective interactions across diverse cultures, multiple perspectives, and worldviews.

1. Communication: Students will use verbal and non-verbal communication and listening skills when interacting with individuals and groups.
2. Global/Intercultural Competence: Students will appreciate differences among worldwide cultures, respect cultural differences, understand their own biases, and develop strategies to better manage conflicts.
3. Teamwork/Collaboration: Students will understand the basics of group dynamics and consensus building, from both the perspective of a participant and a leader.
4. Empathy/Belonging: Students will integrate cultural knowledge on diverse topics in personal and professional settings, with a willingness to assess one’s own skill set regarding empathy and belonging. Students will develop strategies to increase their understanding of others.

Effective July 1, 2024