The Meaning Of Liberal Arts Education In History

As far back as ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, liberal arts education has existed. It was a program of study for people who were not slaves. In those days, receiving a liberal arts education taught students about civic responsibilities and helped them grow as people via the study of language, rhetoric, and reasoning (Liberal Arts College Review, n.d.). During the colonial era, higher education in America was only available to affluent white males. In order to have a diversified student body, they now cater to minority communities. Today’s liberal arts education is still a broad education that enables students to work in a variety of disciplines, just as it was in the past. However, it is widely acknowledged that the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and formal sciences are included in the liberal arts spectrum (Haidar, 2014). With a liberal arts education, you are not restricted to working in a single field of study. Which is advantageous in the long term after you graduate since you have a wide range of expertise in several fields that might be useful to employers.

Basic Education
General education is the initial component that must be finished before choosing a particular subject of study. The majority of general education courses, including those in English, math, the natural and social sciences, humanities, and diversity, are required at many colleges. Schools offer a wide curriculum because it gives kids the chance to try out various activities and decide whether they enjoy them (College Rank, n.d.). The student may benefit from these courses while they choose what degree they wish to pursue. It is advisable to choose a topic of study in which you are interested and have the potential to build a successful career. You could get more passionate about the issue by becoming more involved with it (Slaymaker, 2019).

The liberal arts education complements general education.
It is accurate to say that general education may complement a liberal arts education since they both place an emphasis on the same kinds of courses that will provide the student a well-rounded education. Both options provide a high-quality education that results in graduates who have a thorough awareness of social concerns as well as the arts and sciences (Touro University Worldwide, n.d.). In a way, if a student does not know what major interests them, the core necessary curriculum includes a variety of liberal arts courses and might lead to a liberal arts degree. It might be challenging for college freshman to decide what they want to pursue as a job when they first enroll. They could benefit later on by taking courses or choosing a major that gives you a wide variety of information. According to the Presidents Commission on Higher Education’s report, “universal education is liberal education with its subject and approach transferred from the original aristocratic goal to the service of democracy” (Pooley, 1952).

Course Level Evaluation
Institutions may provide their students evaluations in a variety of methods during the academic year. Teachers utilize a rubric for every assignment that gives the students all the information they need to complete it, and they may use those assignments to evaluate the student’s work if they combine all of the rubric’s components. The instructor will be able to determine whether changes need to be made or other ideas need to be improved without consulting the rubric in order to assist the student do better on the exam. In general, the methods are categorized as direct (where the actual student conduct is observed or evaluated) or indirect (California State University Chico, n.d.). It comprises written work, projects, capstone tasks, and portfolios in a direct evaluation. A student’s performance during the course of the school year may be evaluated using any of the assignments and activities from the syllabus. If a teacher notices that certain students are struggling to grasp the assignment, she may need to change something or make a correction to make it clearer. Interviews, surveys, grades, and self-evaluations are examples of indirect assessment. However, they are unable to employ the indirect evaluation in place of a direct assessment since doing so would provide subpar results as most students just want to complete the questionnaires, mark everything as positive, and make no mention of any issues with the course. A student may have learned a lot about organic chemistry, for instance, if they get a B in that course, but we cannot know from that grade alone what specific areas of organic chemistry they have or have not mastered (Suskie, 2009). Another technique to evaluate the information that the students learnt throughout the lecture is via classroom activities. A teacher may decide to revisit a previously finished laboratory activity and, in doing so, look at the connections between that activity and the current discussion, as a result of comments made by some students during a class discussion that indicate they do not understand the concept of energy conservation (Atkin, Black, & Coffey, 2001). In order to evaluate the content that the students learnt through the activity, teachers include the students in class discussions where they may share their perspectives. Students will complete assessment tasks to determine if the desired objective has been attained both during and after the learning process (York University, n.d.). The job must be relevant to the course subject in order for the student to learn the information that will be tested. Giving a test on history, for instance, when the content covered in class differs from the test or assignment

Direct Techniques for Evaluation
To avoid becoming fruitless, our people must also learn to do kind gestures to address urgent needs (Titus 3:14). There are several direct evaluation techniques that may be used to determine how well a general education course, whether it be in-person or online, has gone. Pre- and post-tests, group projects, and capstone projects are a few that could be useful for both. In the pre and posttest technique, students would take a test on the first day of class to let the instructor know what kind of course material they are familiar with. The instructor will get suggestions for how to modify some of the assignments or instructional strategies from this kind of approach. The posttest, which will be administered at the conclusion of the course, will let the instructor know if the student mastered the subject matter. Group projects are a way to examine how arguments originate from the viewpoints of the group members, but they may also reveal how much the students know about the subject and how the group will be led by its leaders to complete the task. We had a capstone course project since we were distant learners in the past studying law. To be able to observe our classmates and lecturer, Tulane School of Law developed an online skype system that we used to attend courses at night. The capstone course served as our last requirement before graduating, and it synthesized all the knowledge we had gained throughout the program into a single final project that included student union negotiations and a legal brief. Similar to the pre- and post-test procedure, the findings of the capstone project may inform the instructor about what the student learned throughout the course of the course. In general, capstone projects are designed to assist students practice critical thinking, problem-solving, and the development of life-preparation abilities including oral communication, public speaking, research, collaboration, and goal-setting (Great Schools Partnership, n.d.). In the assessment process, student participation is a crucial component, and these direct approaches will determine if the students mastered the information during the course.