Student Learning Outcomes

Student learning outcomes (SLOs) identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that students will be able to demonstrate as a result of their engagement in a particular course, program, or collegiate experience. These learning outcomes are the larger lessons that students take from their educational experiences at MiraCosta College and apply to their courses, their careers, and their lives. Program-level SLOs are listed under Areas of Study in the catalog; course-level SLOs are available to students in their course syllabi and in official course outlines of record, which may be accessed from the Curriculum Management System webpage.

MiraCosta College Core Competencies*

The MiraCosta College Core Competencies describe the broad learning outcomes students should have gained while preparing to transfer (with 60 units that include the CSU-GE or UC-IGETC general education pattern) or through earning a degree as well as through their exposure to different support services and enrichment programs. Courses and programs align to these larger outcomes, and students gain exposure to some, but not necessarily all, of them from educational experiences that may not encompass completion of a degree or transfer pattern.

Upon commencement of studies and progressing toward the completion of an educational goal, MiraCosta College students prepare for twenty-first century challenges by gaining the following competencies:

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World

• Attained through general education and major study in the sciences and mathematics, social and behavioral sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts.

• Informed by awareness of global issues and trends, focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring.

Intellectual and Practical Skills

• Includes 
  • Inquiry, analysis, and independent thinking
  • Critical and creative thinking
  • Quantitative literacy and problem solving
  • Information literacy
  • Written and oral communication skills
  • Integration of knowledge.

• Practiced extensively across the curriculum in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance.

Personal and Social Responsibility and Efficacy

• Includes

  • Civic knowledge and engagement--local and global

  • Intercultural competence and respect for diverse perspectives

  • Teamwork and collaborative skills

  • Ethical reasoning and action

  • Goal-setting/project-planning and completion

  • Skills for ongoing personal, academic, and professional growth.

• Anchored in applied learning through active involvement with real-world challenges and diverse environmental, workplace, cultural, and community contexts.

* These competencies were adapted from the "LEAP" Outcomes (Liberal Education and America's Promise) developed under the auspices of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.