Cluster One: Skills for the 21st Century

Karen McDonnell, Interim Coordinator

Cluster One is the cornerstone of General Education: The Human Community  at JMU. Through course work in three areas and a required information literacy test, this cluster requires students to demonstrate:

• Critical thinking skills
• Effective oral presentation skills
• Effective writing skills
• Competency in information literacy

Competence in these areas is fundamental to subsequent study in major and professional programs. Therefore, all students are required to complete Cluster One requirements during their first academic year at JMU. Cluster One courses may be taken in any order. Cluster One areas and courses are not repeatable without permission. Permission to enroll in additional Cluster One courses is given based on course availability. There are no overrides available in Cluster One courses.

Cluster One Learning Objectives

After completing Cluster One: Skills for the 21st Century, students should be able to use reading, writing, human communication, critical thinking and information literacy skills for inquiring, learning, thinking and communicating in their personal, academic and civic lives.

Critical Thinking

After completing a 100-level Critical Thinking course, students should be able to:

• Identify the basic components of arguments, including premises, supporting evidences, assumptions, conclusions and implications;
• Evaluate claims and sources for clarity, credibility, reliability, accuracy and relevance;
• Evaluate arguments for soundness, strength and completeness;
• Demonstrate an intellectual disposition to be fair-minded in considering evidence, arguments and alternative points of view. 

Human Communication

After completing course work in communication, students should be able to:

• Explain the fundamental processes that significantly influence communication.
• Construct messages consistent with the diversity of communication purpose, audience, context and ethics.
• Respond to messages consistent with the diversity of communication purpose, audience, context and ethics.
• Utilize information literacy skills expected of ethical communicators.

Writing

After completing course work in writing, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an awareness of rhetorical knowledge, which may include the ability to analyze and act on understandings of audiences, purposes and contexts in creating and comprehending texts.
• Employ critical thinking, which includes the ability through reading, research and writing, to analyze a situation or text and make thoughtful decisions based on that analysis.
• Employ writing processes.
• Demonstrate an awareness of conventions, the formal and informal guidelines that define what is considered to be correct and appropriate in a variety of texts.
• Compose in multiple environments using traditional and digital communication tools.

Information Literacy

After completing the Madison Research Essential Skills Test (MREST), JMU’s information literacy test, and course work in critical thinking, human communication and writing, students should be able to:

• Recognize the components of scholarly work and that scholarship can take many forms. 
• Demonstrate persistence and employ multiple strategies in research and discovery processes. 
• Identify gaps in their own knowledge and formulate appropriate questions for investigations in academic settings. 
• Evaluate the quality of information and acknowledge expertise. 
• Use information effectively in their own work and make contextually appropriate choices for sharing their scholarship. 
• Use information ethically and legally.