Center for General Education

Under the active promotion of general education and holistic education, our university has planned mandatory common courses and general education courses. The goal of the mandatory common courses is to strengthen the foundational language skills of undergraduate students, enhance their physical fitness, and foster a spirit of service and mutual assistance, thereby ensuring they possess both humanistic literacy and physical and mental health.

General education emphasizes the possibility of dialogue, communication, and integration between different academic fields, blending tradition with modernity, and integrating globalization with localization. It aims to deepen students' cultural resources, expand their global perspectives, and lay the foundation for lifelong learning. The objective is to cultivate well-rounded individuals with sound character, solid knowledge, social concern, a focus on public interest, an emphasis on coexisting harmoniously with the natural environment, and a global outlook, thereby enhancing the welfare of the nation and humanity.

In 2004, the Ministry of Education conducted a "Pilot Evaluation Project of General Education in Universities" for seven research universities in Taiwan. The evaluation report identified many areas for improvement in the general education of these universities, such as the positioning between general education courses and common subjects, whether the number of general education credits was sufficient, and how to strengthen the understanding and involvement of teachers and students in general education. Consequently, the Joint Education Committee implemented a one-year "Taiwan University General Education Reform Research Project" (from August 2004 to July 2005), collecting extensive experiences from renowned domestic and international universities in implementing general education, and carefully re-planning the framework and content suitable for our university. Based on the recommendations of this research project, after holding several university-wide seminars and public hearings and extensively gathering relevant opinions, a new system of common courses was implemented for freshmen starting from the 2007 academic year.

Regarding the issue of positioning between general education courses and common subjects, the second Academic Affairs Meeting of the second semester of the 2020 academic year (June 18, 2021) resolved to assign the General Education Center, the Department of Chinese Literature, and the Office of Academic Affairs to conduct research and discussions, re-examining the course positioning of university Chinese courses. From October to December 2021, the General Education Center and the Department of Chinese Literature reported to each college on the importance of foundational language skills, language courses at major domestic and international universities, and the current status and improvement directions of our university's Chinese courses, and listened to opinions. In January 2022, two university-wide public hearings were held to collect further opinions from teachers and students of various departments and institutes. The results were presented at the first Academic Affairs Meeting of the second semester of the 2021 academic year (March 18, 2022) by representatives of the General Education Center on "The Necessity of University Chinese as a Mandatory Common Subject" (click the link to download the presentation).

Reference Indicators: To achieve the philosophy and objectives of general education at NTU, the following reference indicators for general education courses are established:

1. Fundamental Nature: The course content should include the basic elements of human civilization. In contrast to instrumental, applied, or leisure courses, the content of general education courses should be fundamental. "Fundamental" here means that the course should involve the most fundamental, important, and indispensable qualities of human civilization.
2. Diversity: The course content should aim to broaden students' horizons, eliminate gender, ethnicity, class, and cultural biases, and cultivate respect for and recognition of diverse differences.
3. Integration: The course content should integrate knowledge from different fields to inspire students' minds and give new interpretations and meanings to knowledge in various fields, thereby fostering insights and creativity in knowledge.
4. Coherence: The course content should connect specific themes across knowledge domains, have an inspiring and guiding role, and achieve an educational effect of interaction and integration with professional knowledge.

In terms of division of labor, courses offered by professional departments should aim to cultivate students' "professional competencies." In addition, other broad knowledge and skills should be achieved through the planning and implementation of our university's common courses, as well as through formal courses, hidden curriculum offered by professional departments, or non-curricular campus activities, creating a learning environment conducive to cultivating students' basic literacy and forming the unique campus culture of National Taiwan University.

The General Education Center's Course Committee of NTU has thus established the following reference indicators for the review of general education courses:

Formal Review Indicators

1. For those with full-time positions at NTU, a three-level, three-stage review system for new courses is implemented, which means that courses must first be approved by the department's course committee, then sent to the General Education Center; the General Education Center will have the general education field convener conduct a preliminary review, and finally, it will be sent to the General Education Center's Course Committee.
2. The course syllabus should be comprehensively written.
3. A list of academic publications or works related to the course from the past five years should be submitted.
4. Courses taught in Chinese should provide a Chinese syllabus, and those taught in English should provide an English syllabus.
5. For part-time teachers, a personal resume should be attached.

Substantive Review Indicators

1. The course design should align with the philosophy and spirit of general education at NTU.
2. The course content planning should meet the corresponding general education domain's course objectives and content descriptions.
3. The course title should match the course content.
4. The course should have a clear main theme and coherence between each lecture.
5. The course content should have an appropriate level of knowledge depth.
6. The academic expertise of the teacher or their extended fields should generally be related to the course content. If the course offered is related to the professional field of the teacher's department, it should be substantively reviewed by that department; otherwise, it should be formally reviewed by the department in terms of personnel, course format, etc.
7. Assigned and extended readings should be detailed and correspond to the weekly progress. The methods and standards for grading, as well as requirements for students' after-class learning, should be reasonably planned and fully explained.