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Appendix B

Transfer Module Guidelines

The intent of the Transfer Module is to help students acquire foundational learning experiences that will assure their ability to achieve success in upper-division coursework. The Transfer Module may be a subset or the complete set ofa college's or university'sgeneral education requirements. It contains 54-60 quarter hours or 36-40 semester hours of course credit in English composition (minimum of 5-6 quarter hours or 3 semester hours); mathematics, statistics, and formal/symbolic logic (minimum of 3 quarter hours or 3 semester hours); arts/humanities (minimum of 9 quarter hours or 6 semester hours); social and behavioral sciences (minimum of 9 quarter hours or 6 semester hours); and natural sciences (minimum of 9 quarter hours or 6 semester hours). Oral communication and interdisciplinary areas may be included as additional options. Additional elective hours from among these areas make up the total hours for a completed Transfer Module. Courses for the Transfer Module should be 100- and 200-level general education courses, and should provide a basic understanding of the modes of inquiry common to the disciplines within each area.

Transfer Module elective courses serve as "pathway" courses directly connected to advanced study in a major. Combined, the required Transfer Module courses, the elective major pathway courses, and additional recommended courses constitute the Transfer Assurance Guide (TAG) for an academic major. A TAG serves as a major advising tool to assist Ohio college and university students to make course selections that will ensure comparable, compatible, and equivalent general education learning experiences across the state's higher-education system.

Common Guidelines for All Courses

The fundamental criterion for considering a course for inclusion in the Transfer Module is that the course directly emphasize at least one of the learning outcomes for the Transfer Module, as described below. Each state institution should keep a file of courses in its Transfer Module; this file should include a rich course description that includes course learning outcomes and assessment methods linked to each learning outcome. Individual course syllabi should communicate these same learning outcomes and assessments to students.

A second general criterion is that all Transfer Module courses (or course sequences) require entry level college proficiencies appropriate to that course. Introductory survey courses are only one kind of course that satisfy this criterion. There are other approaches to the learning outcomes and the content areas that are within the spirit of general education, the Transfer Module, and its attendant TAGs.

Variable topics courses are not acceptable in any category of the Transfer Module.