By: Andrew Koch ~Editor-in-Chief~

As part of the university’s desire to evaluate the Core curriculum, an ad hoc committee has put
together “CORE 499: Reflection on the XU Core,” a new requirement for all seniors who will be graduating in the spring of 2015.

The course requires students to complete a randomly assigned writing task on Canvas that is designed to evaluate the old Core’s outcomes. Students’ responses will be anonymous, and only the group’s collective data will be reported.

“This is an important way to assess what students learn in the Core so that the Core can be continuously improved,“ Dr. Mike Nelson, chair of the Core curriculum committee that created CORE 499, said in an email.

With the changes to the university’s Core curriculum that were implemented at the beginning of this school year, this year’s seniors are the last students to be required to complete the old Core requirements.

Despite the fact that no other students will experience the same Core curriculum as did the seniors who will complete CORE 499, organizers said that students’ responses will still provide valuable information about the Core curriculum in general.

“This information from students will help us determine what students have learned though the Core (in this case, the old Core) and will inform us as to what courses might best be selected to assist students in acquiring and applying the knowledge articulated in our new Core goals,” Nelson said in an email.

CORE 499 is a free, 0 credit-hour course and is graded as satisfactory/unsatisfactory (pass/fail). Its creators anticipate that CORE 499 will take each student about 45 minutes to complete. Students will not be able to graduate in the spring without enrolling in and completing the course.

However, students graduating in December will not need to fulfill CORE 499, though the requirement will still be displayed on their DegreeWorks degree audits.