Honors courses provide a rigorous and creative academic experience for highly motivated students. To foster this experience, honors faculty use clear assessment methodologies and make explicit use of two or more of ÌÇÐÄVlog¹Ù·½'s Institutional Learning Outcomes: think critically; engage diverse values with civic and ethical awareness; create ideas and solutions; communicate effectively; and apply learning. Honors courses provide a value added experience for the student and that learning is assessed through faculty design of the honors component. They also distinguish their honors courses from non-honors courses by incorporating more frequent and more in-depth use of selected components from at least two of the categories listed below.
Formats and Methodologies
- Student participation
- Student ownership of classroom topics, projects, and/or assessment
- Interdisciplinary approach
- Creativity
Research and Writing
- Research opportunities
- Independent and/or collaborative inquiry: reading, research, conjecture (fewer topics/ in-depth)
- Conscious engagement with disciplinary methodologies
- Source sophistication and assessment
- Writing assignments that expect and practice the above qualities
Critical Thinking
- In-depth critical thinking
- Meta-cognition
- Problem seeking/problem solving
- Application of learning in novel situations
- Written or discussion-based student reflection on learning
Professionalization and Leadership
- Field trips, speakers, consultants
- Service learning
- Classroom leadership (individual and distributed)
- Civic engagement
- Professional-level presentations