Purpose There is considerable agreement around the foundation skills required by employers that will enable graduates to integrate and devise promising solutions for the challenges faced by knowledge and globalized societies. These are life skills (communication skills, teamwork and leadership skills, language skills in reading and writing and information literacy), transferable skills (such as problem-solving, including critical thinking, creativity and quantitative reasoning) and technology skills (search for knowledge and build upon it). Foundation skills, however, are recognized to be difficult both to teach and assess. This paper aims to describe a performance assessment method to assess and measure these skills in a uniquely concurrent way – the General Education Foundation Skills Assessment (GEFSA). Design/methodology/approach The GEFSA framework comprises a scenario/case describing an unresolved contemporary issue, which engages student groups in online discussions, and a task-specific analytic rubric to concurrently assess the extent to which students have attained the targeted foundation skills. The method was applied in three semesters – during 2016 and 2017. These students were non-native English speaking students in a General Education program at a university in the UAE. Findings Results obtained from the rubric for each foundation skill were analyzed and interpreted to ensure robustness of method and tool usability and reliability, provide insight into, and commentary on, the respective skill attainment levels and assist in establishing realistic target ranges for General Education student skill attainment. The results showed that the method is valid and provides valuable data for curriculum development. Originality/value This is the first method in published literature that directly assesses the foundation skills for General Education students simultaneously, thus providing educators with valuable data on the skill level of the students. Additionally, repeated use of the method is a valuable way of teaching skills.

中文翻译：

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同时直接评估普通教育的基础技能

目的围绕雇主所需的基础技能达成了广泛共识，这将使毕业生能够为知识和全球化社会所面临的挑战整合和设计有前途的解决方案。这些技能包括生活技能（沟通技能，团队合作和领导能力，读写方面的语言技能和信息素养），可转移技能（例如解决问题，包括批判性思维，创造力和定量推理）和技术技能（寻找知识和技能）。在此基础上）。然而，基础技能被认为既难以教授又难以评估。本文旨在描述一种以独特的并行方式评估和衡量这些技能的绩效评估方法-通用教育基金会技能评估（GEFSA）。设计/方法/方法GEFSA框架包括描述一个未解决的当代问题的方案/案例，该问题/案例使学生团体参与在线讨论，以及针对特定任务的分析规则，以同时评估学生达到目标基础技能的程度。该方法在2016年和2017年的三个学期中得到了应用。这些学生是阿联酋一所大学的通识教育课程中的非英语母语学生。研究结果分析并解释了从基础知识中获得的每种基础技能的结果，以确保方法和工具的可用性和可靠性的稳健性，提供对相应技能水平的深入了解和评论，并帮助建立通识教育学生技能的实际目标范围素养。结果表明，该方法是有效的，为课程开发提供了有价值的数据。独创性/价值这是已发表文献中第一种直接同时评估通识教育学生基础技能的方法，从而为教育工作者提供了有关学生技能水平的宝贵数据。另外，重复使用该方法是一种有价值的教学技巧。