Learning Goals
Learning Expectations for Undergraduates
The undergraduate learning objectives are defined in the assessment plan within three critical areas of student performance and development:
- What a student knows
- What a student cares about
- What a student can do
What a Student Knows - Goals
Graduates of the CSUS Criminal Justice Program should possess a knowledge base that includes:
- criminal and juvenile law
- judicial process and law of adjudication
- criminology and crime theory
- law enforcement structure and process
- correctional structure and process
- management and leadership theory
What a Student Cares About - Personal Growth and Citizenship - Goals
Graduates of the Criminal Justice Program should have developed:
- interpersonal and leadership skills
- an acute sense of one's personal identity and potential
- cultural awareness, flexibility, and sensitivity to fully appreciate the values and differences of a diverse society
- the ability to recognize the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of a citizen
Graduates of the CSUS Criminal Justice Program should be able to:
- analyze information
- think critically
- read effectively
- speak effectively
- write effectively
- research effectively
- solve problems
The following are examples of objectives that relate to goals defining "What a Criminal Justice Graduate Can Do."
Goal : Graduates should be able to analyze information
Specific Learning Outcomes - Criminal Justice graduates will be able to:
- Identify and examine a complex whole on the basis of its respective parts and on the relationship between those parts.
- Read, interpret and use criminal justice and criminological data skillfully.
- Read, interpret, and comprehend research reports, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of these reports.
- Adopt and express a scientific orientation in which everything is open to further testing, reinterpretation, or refutation.
- Read, interpret, and restate the meaning of legal statutes, associated case law, and legal dispositions.
Goal : CSUS graduates should be able to think critically
Learning Outcomes - Criminal Justice graduates will be able to:
- Evaluate (assess the credibility of communication and the strengths of its claims and arguments) criminological explanations and criminal justice policies.
- Identify and interpret (understand and express the meaning of) ethical problems they may confront in criminal justice practice.
- Identify and evaluate the assumptions underlying criminal justice policies and assess their empirical basis.
- Identify and avoid errors in reasoning, such as provincialism, overgeneralization, and emotional identification relative to argument.
- Apply deductive and inductive approaches to the construction of theories to account for crime and justice phenomena.
- Evaluate criminal justice programs on the basis of the relative efficiency and effectiveness of the program's processes and outcomes.
Goal : CSUS Criminal Justice graduates should be able to read effectively
Learning Outcomes - Criminal Justice graduates will be able to:
- Read, comprehend, and evaluate information contained in texts, technical reports, instruction manuals, computer media, data in graphs and charts, periodicals, journal articles, and memos.
- Read for content by identifying themes, recognizing relationships, understanding the use of devices such as metaphor, irony and humor, conceptualizing abstractions, and recognizing confusing, vague, and ambiguous language.
- Read for analysis by identifying the explicit and implied features of the text, especially the arguments or positions that put forth a conclusion.
- Read for evaluation by judging and assessing the credibility of a text and the strength of claims or positions.
- Read for inference and reasoning to form new knowledge, draw conclusions, solve problems, explain, decide and/or predict.
- Read with reflection to monitor one's comprehension and to correct one's process of thinking.
Goal : Criminal Justice graduates should be able to speak effectively
Learning Outcomes - Criminal Justice graduates will be able to:
- Demonstrate mastery of the processes of basic speech communication (the selection and arrangement of elements to produce spoken messages.
- Demonstrate mastery of interpersonal and group communication (the management of human relations)
- Demonstrate mastery of communication codes (the ability to use and understand spoken English and non-verbal signs)
- Demonstrate mastery of oral message evaluation (the evaluation of oral messages and their effects)
- Distinguish and avoid language-indicating bias.
- Outline key points and sub-points of their spoken messages.
- Use pronunciation, grammar, and articulation appropriate for designated audience.
- Adapt to changes in audience characteristics.
- Support arguments with relevant and adequate evidence.
- Restate assumptions, evidence, and conclusions of an argument.
Goal : Criminal Justice graduates should be able to write effectively.
Learning Outcomes - Criminal Justice graduates will be able to define, explain, criticize, propose, recommend, review, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate.
Their writing should be characterized by:
- a. well-developed main idea
- b. major points developed with multi-level elaboration
- c. relevant generalizations
- d. clear organizational plan that is suited to the topic
- e. development of all parts of the composition with no digressions
- f. use of vocabulary specific to the purpose of the paper
- g. compliance with the conventions of grammar, punctuation, formatting, and spelling.
