Improving Liberal Arts Curriculum through Analyzing the Perceptions Gaps and Priority Setting in Core Competencies between Faculties and Students : A Case Study of G University

This study aimed to analyze the perception gaps in core competencies between faculty and students and derive improvements for the liberal arts curriculum from the perspective of developing new competencies required in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era. The study investigated faculty and student perceptions of sub-competencies under G University's six core competencies. The participants included 103 faculties and 213 students. An online survey was conducted from May to July 2023. The analysis was performed using Borich's needs assessment and The Locus for Focus model. The study analyzed differences in importance-performance perceptions of core competencies between faculties and students and identified competencies requiring priority improvement. The results showed that faculty emphasized fundamental and essential competencies such as empathy, creativity, and thinking skills, while students placed more importance on practical competencies like knowledge information utilization, self-directed learning, and foreign language skills. There were significant gaps between current and target levels in competencies that faculties’ considered important. Faculties showed high educational needs in the order of empathy> creativity>thinking skills>ethical awareness>knowledge information utilization>responsibility, while students' educational needs were high in the order of knowledge information utilization>creativity>self- direction>decision-making>community citizenship> foreign language utilization. This study is significant in that it empirically identified perception gaps between faculties and students regarding core competencies and provided practical evidence for efficient allocation of limited educational resources. Based on the findings, the study suggests practical measures including curriculum design considering faculty-student perception gaps, establishment of integrated competency assessment systems, improvement of practical teaching-learning methods, and institutional support for these improvements.