General Education:
Empowers Students with Broad Knowledge and Practical Skills
By Son Hyun-jee, Student Editor
As the difference between general and liberal educations when applied to higher education at universities remains unclear, people usually make no distinction between the two. In this article, the term “general education” is used as a synonym for “liberal education” and “liberal arts” is used for core and basic general education courses at Chonnam National University (CNU). -Ed.
Every student, regardless of their major, has to take classes in general education programs. General education helps students develop their abilities to learn, think and communicate by providing knowledge and skills in diverse disciplines like liberal arts. A survey on general education conducted by the Center of General Education (CGE) at CNU in 2012 showed that many students think general education is important, and about one third of the respondents were satisfied with it. What do you think about the general education of CNU? Are you satisfied with the general education courses you chose this semester?
General Education Information and Students’ Recognition
CNU operates a variety of general education courses which are divided into three major programs—core, basic and general liberal arts. The Core liberal arts program consists of four parts - Literature and the Arts, Philosophy and History, Understanding Society, and Understanding Nature and has 30 courses. The Basic liberal arts program has 43 courses including Basic Writing and Global English that CNUians must take to graduate. The General liberal arts program is divided into 12 parts and has 171 courses. Those courses have been administered by the CGE which was established in 2010 to enhance general education by evaluating the courses and to develop more effective curricula for students.
From last November 28th to December 19th, the center carried out an online survey on Students’ Recognition of General Education to check the current system of general education and improve it through follow-up surveys. 847 students participated in the survey, and 64.9% of respondents said general education is important, but only 35.3% of the students were generally satisfied with the general education classes. 27.5% of respondents thought that general education did not accomplish its purpose. Let’s look into what students think about general education focusing on a newly introduced system – the must-read books and the feedback system in core liberal arts courses and how to assign students to a class in basic liberal arts courses.
Students discuss general education in Bongji
Core Liberal Arts: Must-read and Feedback System
Out of three different fields in general education, core liberal arts is the most important. The number of students who can take each class in this field is limited to 60 for increasing the efficiency of class. Professors who are in charge of core liberal arts courses have to assign more than one must-read and feedback on students’ reports during the semester. According to the survey, 41.3% of respondents answered reading must-read books in core liberal arts is needed for their learning ability, but 45.3% thought one must-read is appropriate because reading several must-read books is a big burden.
Regarding professor’s feedback on student’s reports, over half of the students who answered said that most professors provided their feedback in writing rather than verbally. Students who received face-to-face feedback from professors were only 12.8%. Park Goo-yong (Professor, Department of Philosophy), former vice dean of Office of Academic Affairs, said there are some problems with the feedback system. “Professors don’t have enough time to feedback on about 60 students’ works individually. Especially, most part-time lecturers don’t have personal space at the university so they have a harder time to give feedback on students’ reports. There is no specific support on this area from administration so far.” From 2013, CGE will provide 20000 won per core liberal arts course for feedback, though this measure is still not enough to handle the situation. It is expected that this problem will be solved this semester.
Basic Liberal Arts: Automatic Class Arrangement
Students that take Basic Writing in the basic liberal arts course are assigned to a class by the number of each department’s students. Some students complain that there is a huge gap existing between classes which are taught by different lecturers. Each lecturer’s teaching method is different in the number of reports, the teaching process, even the number of exams. A student from the Dept. of Nursing said her class had a big difference from other classes last semester. “I could not understand why I had such a bad result, so I requested an explanation of the grade.” There is the standard syllabus and evaluation guideline for the course developed by the CGE from 2011, but it is unclear whether it has been properly taken in action or not for evaluation. It is also said that students need an option to choose a professor like Global English.
The CGE’s Efforts
To reinforce and develop more effective curriculum and systems for general education, the CGE makes various efforts such as regular workshops and develops a standard syllabus for lecturers. Lee Hak-young (Professor, Department of Biology), the Dean of the CGE, said that many students are unhappy with general education because of the lecturers. Not only the content of courses itself, lecturers’ teaching competency is also one of the most important factors that affects the lecture quality. To raise the quality of the courses, lecturers of the core liberal arts courses and Basic Writing have participated in regular workshops of the CGE. On February 19th and 18th a Teaching Method in Writing Workshop was held in Truth Hall. The attendance rate of lecturers of the Institute of Liberal Education amounted to almost 100%. In this workshop, they exchanged their teaching methods and reflected them on their classes. On February 20th and 4th, a Core Liberal Arts Workshop was also held in Truth Hall.
With these efforts, the center has been recognized by other universities and has exchanged continuously with domestic and foreign universities including Seoul National University since 2012. Institutions of general education of national universities located in local regions have visited the center and had information such as management of core liberal arts and restructuring of the whole general education curriculum.
August Rodin's The Thinker in front of Meonghak Hall at the Hakdong Campus of CNU
Why Is General Education Needed?
Kim Bong-joong (Professor, Department of History) said that students and even professors still are not aware of the importance of general education. In the above-mentioned survey, quite a number of students want new classes in general education such as cooking, art, and making coffee. Subjects of general education are not the same as a hobby you can easily enjoy and should not be the subject you can easily get the good grade in. Also the number of students who obtained information for registering for general education courses on the homepage of CNU was 38.7%, but over half of the respondents answered that they took course-related information from their seniors and peers. “I chose general education courses and its classes mainly based on the advice of my peers and seniors who I met in the freshman orientation. Most syllabi were monotonous and I could hardly find useful information about registering for classes from the official home page of CNU.” said Jeong Bo-ra (Freshman, Dept. of English Language and Literature)
Park Goo-yong (Professor, Department of Philosophy) advised students to get the information from the right sources. “Most students have a tendency to choose courses easily based on superficial information from their peers and seniors with less objectivity. Every college and department provides students with guides to choose liberal arts courses in freshman orientation so that students can make use of this information.”
General education helps students have lots of abilities to communicate with people, think critically and understand various fields of study and aspects of culture. From general education, students eventually make a reasonable choice as a human being leading private and also public life. It is time to realize why general education is needed- wisdom to help solve the problem that they are facing in the real world.
손현지 기자
qhsmldkdl@naver.com