By the Numbers: Achievement Centered Education

Sunday, August 28, 2022 - 8:15am
What is ACE?

UNL's Achievement-Centered Education (ACE) general education program is built on student learning outcomes that answer the fundamental question, "What should all undergraduate students - irrespective of their majors and career aspirations - know or be able to do upon graduation?”

Students at UNL must take courses that are certified to meet 10 identified student learning outcomes as a requirement of their degree program.

 Learning Outcomes

The 10 ACE learning outcomes help students develop skills (ACE 1-3), build knowledge (ACE 4-7), exercise social responsibility (ACE 8-9) and integrate and apply those capabilities (Ace 10).

ACHIEVEMENT-CENTERED EDUCATION (ACE)

Institutional Objectives and Student Learning Outcomes

Develop intellectual and practical skills, including proficiency in written, oral, and visual communication; inquiry techniques; critical and creative thinking; quantitative applications; information assessment; teamwork; and problem-solving.
ACE 1:

Write texts, in various forms, with an identified purpose, that respond to specific audience needs, integrate research or existing knowledge, and use applicable documentation and appropriate conventions of format and structure.
ACE 2:

Demonstrate competence in communication in one or more of the following ways:

  1. by making oral presentations with supporting materials,
  2. by leading and participating in problem-solving teams,
  3. by employing communication skills for developing and maintaining professional and personal relationships, or
  4. by producing and/or interpreting visual information.
ACE 3:  Use mathematical, computational, statistical, logical, or other formal reasoning to solve problems, draw inferences, justify conclusions and determine reasonableness.

Build knowledge of diverse peoples and cultures and of the natural and physical world through the study of mathematics, sciences and technologies, histories, humanities, arts, social sciences, and human diversity.
ACE 4:  Use scientific methods and knowledge to pose questions, frame hypotheses, interpret data, and evaluate whether conclusions about the natural and physical world are reasonable.
ACE 5:   Use knowledge, historical perspectives, analysis, interpretation, critical evaluation, and the standards of evidence appropriate to the humanities to address problems and issues.
ACE 6:  Use knowledge, theories, methods, and research perspectives such as statistical methods or observational accounts, appropriate to the social sciences to understand and evaluate social systems or human behaviors.
ACE 7:  Use knowledge, theories, or methods appropriate to the arts to understand their context and significance.

Exercise individual and social responsibilities through the study of ethical principles and reasoning, application of civic knowledge, interaction with diverse cultures, and engagement with global issues.
ACE 8:  Use knowledge, theories, and analysis to explain ethical principles and their importance to society.
ACE 9:  Exhibit global awareness or knowledge of human diversity through analysis of an issue.

Integrate these abilities and capacities, adapting them to new settings, questions, and responsibilities.
ACE 10:

Generate a creative or scholarly product that requires broad knowledge, appropriate technical proficiency, information collection, synthesis, interpretation, presentation, and reflection.

Approved by UNL faculty as of January 2008. Updated 2016.

Do our students participate in ACE?

Each CoJMC major must take two classes that meet each ACE 1 through 9 learning outcomes. CoJMC students only take one ACE 10 course, their capstone.

Requiring ACE courses helps the college meet the Accrediting Council in Education in Journalism and Mass Communications accrediting requirements. ACEJMC Standard 2, Curriculum and Instruction, requires “Students in the unit complete academic requirements for a baccalaureate degree that meet the liberal arts and sciences/general education requirements of the institution.”

Until recently, this standard required that students complete 72 hours outside the college, but ACEJMC still emphasizes a broad liberal arts education and a fundamental commitment to a well-rounded education. ACE requirements for CoJMC majors help us meet this important standard.

Not all students appreciate the college’s double ACE requirement. In feedback from the Senior Exit Survey, about 5% of our students consistently cite the double ACE requirement as their biggest challenge during their degree program (13 out of 253 respondents in AY 21-22). Most students who oppose the double ACE requirement would prefer to take more classes within the college. 

Spring 2022 (9 students out of 165)
  • The biggest challenges were being able to fit relevant courses into my schedule because I was required to take so many aces and liberal arts, I was forced to take classes that did not often relate to what I was learning or interested in, which was frustrating and often caused me to avoid course work because it was not relevant to my actual major or interests in college.
  • Completing double aces
  • I don't know if this is due to the CoJMC or the University as a whole, but I felt the majority of my time was spent on ACE courses which I was not as excited about. I wish I would have been able to take more courses within the college instead of having to take so many ACE courses.
  •  I wish that I could have taken more classes at CoJMC instead of so many ACE courses.
  • Having to do double ace classes (find a solution for that)
  • Needing to take double aces
  • The J school required way too many classes that didn't go towards my major and they felt like a complete waste of time.
  • taking all of the ACE classes - I would much rather have taken other journalism college-related classes like broadcasting or journalism instead of random ACE classes.
  • Taking two rounds of ACE classes were hard to be motivated for because they don't matter.

Fall 2021 (3 students out of 68)
  • Having to take pointless ACE classes that were tougher and extremely less significant than the work I was doing for my major.
  • The amount of ACE requirements, workload
  • Taking so many general elective courses. I wish I could have taken more hours within the college instead of outside the college. Some of those ACE courses felt like a waste of my time and money considering we need two sets of them.

Summer 2022 (1 student out of 20)
  • My biggest challenge was not dropping out because of the unnecessary amount of ACE's required. I also found it challenging to understand what was required of me to graduate because of the constant restructuring happening at CoJMC.

Adding required research/data courses to each college major could impact double ACE requirements. Currently, students are required to take 49 credit hours inside the college and 66 credit hours outside the college, including 27 ACE credits. Today, some of the students’ ACE requirements can be met with CoJMC courses. If we increase the required credits inside the college to 52, the number of required credits outside the college would fall. We may shift to only requiring one set of ACE 1 to 9 courses, but requiring they are all taken outside the college. See the full breakdown of potential changes.  

The college’s curriculum committee will be considering the addition of a research and data course and its impacts on our general education requirements this fall.

 ACE Certification

Courses from across UNL can become ACE certified by demonstrating that course content meets one of the 10 learning outcomes. After a course is certified students can enroll in the course to meet their ACE requirements.

Our ACE Courses

The college has 28 ACE-certified courses. There are several reasons we certify our courses for inclusion in the ACE program, including (1) we have a depth of expertise in several of the ACE learning outcomes and (2) ACE certification attracts students from across campus and improves our student credit hour production. Increasing student credit hour production in ACE courses is a goal of our strategic plan.

Course Course Title ACE
ADPR 189H UNIV HONORS SEMINAR 8
ADPR 429 JACHT STDNT AD AGENCY 10
ADPR 438 GLOBAL ADVERTISING 9
ADPR 439 STUDENT COMPETITIONS 10
ADPR 489 ADVT & P R CAMPAIGN 10
ADRP 221 STRATEGIC WRITING 1
BRDC 260 MEDIA WRITNG&CONTENT DEV 1
BRDC 429 JACHT STU AD AGENCY 10
JGEN 120 BASIC BUSINESS COMM 1
JGEN 184 BASIC PHOTOGRAPHY 2
JGEN 200 TECH COMMUNICATION I 1
JGEN 200H TECH COMMUNICATION I 1
JGEN 288H HNRS: APPLD COMM II 1
JGEN 300 TECH COMMUNICATN II 1
JGEN 300 TECH COMMUNICATN II 2
JOMC 222 SOC JUST,HUMN RIGHTS 8
JOMC 222 SOC JUST,HUMN RIGHTS 9
JOMC 317 VIDEO GAMES&SOCIETY 6
JOMC 380 GLBL NEWS:SOCIAL MEDIA 9
JOMC 422 RACE GENDER & MEDIA 8
JOMC 422 RACE GENDER & MEDIA 9
JOMC 487 MASS MEDIA & SOCIETY 8
JOUR 189H UNIV HONORS SEMINAR 5
JOUR 200B FNDMNTLS EDIT&RPRT II 1
JOUR 400 THE NEWS LAB 10
SPMC 189H ISSUES & ETHICS IN SPORTS 8
SPMC 250 BEGIN SPORTS WRITING 1
SPMC 450 SPORTS MEDIA&COMM CAPST 10

A majority of our ACE courses are certified for outcomes 1 (writing) and 10 (capstone).

 

Most of our ACE courses are JOMC or JGEN courses.

ACE courses generated 35% of the college’s student credit hour production between 2017-2018 and 2020-2021. SCH from ACE courses has grown 54.1% over the same timeframe. In 2017-2018, ACE courses produced 6,600 credit hours. In 2020-2021, the figure had grown to 10,170. 

 

Growth in ACE SCH has been driven by growth in enrollment in ACE 1 courses.

Growth in ACE 1 courses has been driven by increased enrollment in our JGEN courses. JGEN 120, 200 and 300 have all saw increases in 2020-2021. Additional departments within the College of Engineering began requiring the completion of JGEN 200 as part of their degree programs in 2020-2021. 

ACE Assessment and Proposed Changes

All ACE outcomes are periodically assessed using standardized rubrics developed by committees of faculty from across the university. Each year, the university assesses 3 ACE outcomes and conducts an ACE program review every five years.  

A recent program review resulted in three proposals to realign ACE outcomes aimed at ensuring students can exercise social responsibility. The proposals are: 

  1. To clearly articulate to students, faculty, advisers and others the value of each of our 10 student learning outcomes and to incorporate student self-evaluation of outcome achievement into course-level assessment. 

  2. To separate ACE 9 into its component parts - a) global awareness and b) human diversity 

  3. To remove the current ACE 10 requirement, typically met with program-specific capstones and not general education

The University Curriculum Committee will be considering the proposals this fall. Read the full program review report.