Making Sense of the 'Loose Baggy Monster': Assessing Learning in a General Education Program Is a Whale of a Task

Assessing common target outcome for a general education program is difficult in an undergraduate "cafeteria style" program because of the scope of courses and lack of uniformity in the students' choices, and the difficulties associated with tracking a large number of transfer students. The University of Central Florida used a course embedded assessment plan with Composition and College Algebra, assessing competencies learned in those courses. The authors of this essay describe their experiences with a course-embedded approach in selected English and mathematics courses designed to assess student learning in target skills and knowledge areas in the General Education Program (GEP). It is their hope that the details of their experiences and the lessons they learned along the way will be helpful to others who are struggling with the same issues.