Institutional Learning Objectives (ILO)
Institutional Learning Objectives (ILOs) are the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that students are expected to develop as a result of their overall experiences with any aspect of the college, including courses, programs, and student services. ILOs are designed to help guide individual departments and disciplines in the development of learning outcomes for programs and courses and services, and to help shape the decision making processes of IAU.
ILOs are the collective expression of the learning environment at IAU. Each program must contribute to at least one ILO. The following are rules of thumb when establishing or connecting, PLOs, and to ILO(s):
- Each program need NOT fulfill every ILO.
- Each course within a program needs NOT fulfill every program learning objective (PLO).
- A course should meet every one of its stated learning objectives.
Upon successful completion at IAU, students will be able to demonstrate:
ILO1: WRITTEN COMMUNICATION: Written communication is the development and expression of ideas in writing. Written communication involves learning to work in many genres and styles. It can involve working with many different writing technologies, and mixing texts, data, and images. Written communication abilities develop through iterative experiences across the curriculum (AAC&U).
ILO2: ORAL COMMUNICATION: Oral communication is a prepared, purposeful presentation designed to increase knowledge, to foster understanding, or to promote change in the listeners' attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors (AAC&U).
ILO3: CRITICAL THINKING: A habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion (AAC&U).
ILO4: INTEGRATIVE AND APPLIED LEARNING: Integrative learning is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond the campus (AAC&U).
ILO5: ETHICS: Christian ethics is reasoning about right and wrong human conduct. It requires students to be able to assess their own Christian ethical values and the social context of problems, recognize ethical issues in a variety of settings, think about how different ethical perspectives might be applied to ethical dilemmas and consider the ramifications of alternative actions. Students’ Christian ethical self-identity evolves as they practice ethical decision-making skills and learn how to describe and analyze positions on ethical issues (AAC&U adapted).
ILO6: INFORMATION LITERACY: The ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand. - Adopted from the National Forum on Information Literacy (AAC&U).
