The initiative to have faculty members tag courses according to the competencies their courses offer continues this semester, with the deadline for completion three months away.
“Tagging for the remaining group of undergraduate courses must be completed by Wednesday, May 31, for the 2024-25 registration process and catalog year,” says Anne Mosher, Provost’s Faculty Fellow for Shared Competencies and High Impact Practices and associate professor of geography and the environment in the Maxwell School.
Academic departments have been actively tagging their courses with the Shared Competencies to show students how course content aligns with the University-wide learning goals.
“In the first year of the two-year initiative, 1,453 discrete tags were placed across 838 courses as of mid-September 2022. That represented about 30% of the total number of courses that needed to be tagged,” says Amanda Johnson Sanguiliano, associate director, Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment. She says the tagging effort has been widespread, with 538 faculty and staff participating in course tagging work. In addition, 10 faculty and staff librarians from the University Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies have been reviewing course tag reflections, she says.
“There was great progress in this effort continuing throughout the fall,” says Mosher. “We applaud the involvement of faculty who have been diligent in completing tagging of their courses and the work of staff who’ve been involved in that process. We will be celebrating the successful status reached so far, especially when students start using the tags during the Fall 2023 registration period that begins later this semester.”
According to Johnson Sanguiliano and Mosher, the school that has tagged the highest percentage of its eligible courses is the College of Professional Studies. There are also a number of departments that have tagged at least 50% of their eligible courses to date. They are:
Information about the criteria and process for course tagging is located on the Shared Competencies website. A toolkit for faculty is provided on the course tagging information page. An explanatory video regarding the course tagging process is also available. Faculty and advisors interested in seeing a list of approved course tags can find an excel file on the Shared Competencies website. Faculty exemplar reflections can also be found on the Shared Competencies website to help faculty guide their own reflections.
Faculty who are still working on course tagging can submit reflections via the course tag reflection form.
The Shared Competencies are six university-wide learning goals that enhance undergraduate education through an integrated learning approach. Adopted by the Syracuse University Senate in 2018, they enable students to communicate their learning experience, provide pathways for academic development and integrate different aspects of a Syracuse University education.
The categories are:
