Transcript UNIS Template

EDUCATING STUDENTS IN A WORTHWHILE WAY:
Graduate Attributes, curriculum renewal and
community engaged learning & teaching
Australian Collaborative Education Network
NSW/ACT Forum 2nd May 2011
A/PROF SIMON BARRIE, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
GRADUATE OUTCOMES
Everybody is….
Developing 'new' statements of outcomes
Renewing curriculum ……(to achieve such outcomes?)
Demonstrating achievements …..( or is that measuring compliance?)
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GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES........POSSIBILITIES
Developing statements of outcomes
If we are to
avoid the trap
of ‘graduate
becoming unhelpful
Renewing
curriculum
……(to
achieveoutcomes’
such outcomes?)
bureaucracy we need to engage the university in thinking in a more collaborative
and scholarly way about teaching and learning
Demonstrating achievements …..(measuring compliance?)
1. Collaborating on the outcomes we are describing
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GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES
They are descriptions of the core abilities and values a university community
agrees all its graduates should develop as a result of successfully
completing their university studies (adapted from Bowden et al 2000).
Graduate attributes are an orientating statement of education outcomes
used to inform curriculum design and engagement with teaching and
learning experiences at a university (Barrie 2009).
Graduate attribtues are one way of starting a rich conversation, across the
university, about how the university's intentions, values and mission are
embodied in the learning experiences and outcomes of its students.
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What ‘good’ is university supposed to deliver?
› personal benefit………..work
› personal benefit………..life
› public benefit …….. economy
› public benefit ………democracy
› The mix of intended 'goods' can
influence our descriptions of the
sorts of graduates universities should
be producing and how they should
be taught and assessed
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What ‘good’ is university supposed to deliver?
A. We do not need Universities to teach professional skills, we need them to
teach people how to think and question the world we now live in
B. Industry wants employees who have all the work competencies and
professional skills rather than (graduates) who are still learning these skills
C. The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not a trade; character, not
technicalities
D. Higher education has an essential role in furthering democratic culture; and
the responsibility to educate each successive generation to renew and
develop the attitudes, values and skills needed for this to become a reality
E. This country cannot afford to educate a generation that acquires knowledge
without ever understanding how that knowledge can benefit society or how
to influence democratic decision making
F.
Universities have a key role in preparing graduates for their participation in
a civil society
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What ‘good’ is university supposed to deliver?
LETTER
1.
Business and Higher Education Round Table
2.
A British Prime Minister
3.
A graduate recruiter for a major financial firm
4.
Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe
5.
University WIL expert
6.
Presidents of American Universities
Different ‘goods’ can be ‘exaggerated’ when we get together with a small group of
like-minded people to ‘concisely’ describe graduate outcomes
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What ‘good’ is university supposed to deliver?
LETTER
1.
Business and Higher Education Round Table
F
2.
A British Prime Minister
C
3.
A graduate recruiter for a major financial firm
A
4.
Heads of State and Government of the Council of Europe
D
5.
University WIL expert
B
6.
Presidents of American Universities
E
The longer people spend thinking about these intended outcomes… and the more
they talk to people who have a different perspective on the same question…. the
more complex & ‘enabling’ those statements of outcomes become.
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Collaborating with other
researchers….ever heard of Blooms
taxonomy?
Graduate Attributes are actually
several different sorts of types of
‘understand’
1. Precursor
2. Complementary
3. Translation
4. Enabling
Statements describing these
graduate attributes, and
universities’ efforts to foster the
development of these attributes,
need to accommodate these
differences (Barrie 2004, 2007)
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We need to collaborate and pay attention to many
‘goods’ when writing outcomes
› Citizenship – educated members of local, national and global
societies who can usefully contribute to shaping those
societies as well as Employment - contribute through, and
derive satisfaction from, their work - and work connects to
other parts of their life and to society.
› But......The education process itself can be a 'good'
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Social ‘good’ is achieved through more than our
graduates’ attributes
› The choice of education process itself can make a positive
contribution to society
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PART 2: Collaboration and learning
The interest in statements of outcomes often stops at the articulation of a
list…..it does not get translated into the sorts of pedagogical conversations and
curriculum actions that have any impact on student learning.
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Collaborative learning experiences
› To achieve certain sorts of learning outcomes, univeristies
need to offer certain sorts of learning experiences (Alignment)
› For students to learn to thrive on uncertainty, to be able to
work with multiple perspectives in culturally diverse teams, to
deal with the plurality of world views that will characterise any
problem of social, national or global significance in their
work…then those sorts of things need to be scaffolded into
their learning experiences at university – not left until they
graduate
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Certain sorts of learning experiences?....A renewed
role for ‘collaborative’ (in its broadest sense) education
› Students need to learn about more than just their own discipline – they need to learn
about the perspectives offered by their fellow students' fields of study Without that
collaboration - how else will they know the limitations of their own field?
› Students need to learn in collaboration with other students - in ways that promote and
benefit from their independence and collegiallity.
› Students need to learn about their discipline from more than one perspective – how do
practitioners, consumers, 'Others’ understand their discipline? We need to collaborate
with others as teachers… and students need to collaborate with others as learners.
› Students need to learn about their discipline in relation to consequential issues … not
just ‘in abstract’ or ‘in theory’ or 'in isolation'……..but 'in collaboration' –its learning in an
engaged and meaningful way in relation to something.
› They need to learn…. Students need to be active, inquiring, seeking that learning – it is
no good us teaching if they don’t approach learning in that way…..we need to
collaborate with them as their teachers.
› And of course, strategies such as WIL potentially offer all this and more……
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FROM OUTCOME STATEMENTS
TO LEARNING EXPERIENCES
› Two ‘collaborative’ strategies that might help:
› 1. To get traction on the curriculum and
influence student learning experiences
› 2. To bypass the bureaucracy of ‘audits’ to
build engagement by identifying sources of
data that encourage, rather than shut down,
conversations
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Getting ‘traction’ on the curriculum
› Signature learning experiences: What does the university want to be
known for in terms of the learning experiences it will provide for its
students?
›
A research intensive university…….. ‘Engaged enquiry’ through two
pedagogical strategies
›
Research enriched learning and teaching (RELT)
›
Community engaged learning and teaching (CELT)
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Getting ‘traction’ on the curriculum
WHAT DOES CELT LOOK LIKE IN THE CURRICULUM?
› Curriculum content. Community based, external sources of knowledge,
research and application examples are included in curricular content.
› Curriculum teaching and learning processes. learning through experiential
interaction with information and expertise derived from sources external to
academia that connects their discipline to its external contexts of
application, interpretation and adaptation. This can invovle internships,
practica, field studies, service learning, work integrated learning, and other
models of experiential learning.
› Curriculum learning outcomes reflect the impact of engaged and
experiential learning processes on student learning. Our graduate
attributes describe these.
› Curriculum is more than the class room (wherever that might be) - it is
about the what is learnt through the broader experience of learning as a
member of the university community and as a member of the wider
community be it local, regional or global.
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Getting ‘traction’ on the curriculum (sequences)
DIMENSIONS OF INCREASING LEARNER CHALLENGE
1.
Complexity of learning outcome
 Learning outcomes the activity develops and demonstrates
 Prior learning the activity assumes
2. Challenge to learner
 Difficulty of task (learning process, multi-part activity, scale, time required, familiarity of task)
 Scaffolding (Independence, autonomy of learner, level of teacher support, modelling etc)
 Role (learner as research subject, author, initiating agent)
 Integration (connections to other learners, community and research partners or to other
ideas)
3. Significance for system
 Risk (to the student, the university, the community)
 Impact (on the student’s learning, benefit and usefulness to the university, the discipline or
consequence for the community)
 Cost (resources, time, expertise)
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Getting ‘traction’ on the curriculum
UNIVERSITY WIDE PROCESS OF CURRICULUM REVIEW
1. Engaged enquiry is part of the agreed strategic plan for the next five
years
2. The graduate attributes, Sydney signature learning experiences of
RELT & CELT and the idea of increasing learning challenge will provide
the framework which will support the development of curricula
and side-stepping bureaucracy to build engagement
1. Resources to support engagement in those sorts of strategic curriculum
conversations (STEPs)
2. Identify and provide sources of data that encourage, rather than shut
down, conversations
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Building engagement
SUPPORTING CURRICULUM RENEWAL
›
$M1.2 competitive grant scheme to support curriculum development
projects:
1. Renewal of curricula to provide RELT /CELT experiences that foster
greater student engagement
2. Implementation of RELT /CELT teaching strategies that foster greater
student engagement
3. Implementation of RELT /CELT assessment activities that foster greater
student engagement
4. Development of faculty / school / department activities that offer
students greater engagement with the research culture of the faculty /
school / department or greater engagement with the professional /
broader community.
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Building engagement
Curriculum Mapping & Audits
› Students gathering other students' experiences of engaged enquiry as a 'map'
› A collaboration with students…..
› Explained 'engaged enquiry' to students
› Trained the students to conduct & write up focus groups
› Supported the students to analyse data & validate the curriculum framework
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COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
GRADUATE OUTCOMES
1. Collaborate to encompass multiple
views on what a univeristy education is
for when developing statemtns fo
graduate outcomes
2. Collaborate by using the research on
graduate outcomes in developing
statements
3. 'Collaborative learning' comes in many
guises and most are well aligned with
achieving graduate outcomes
4. Collaboration might hold the key to
getting past the bureacracy that seems
to accompany efforts to use graduate
outcomes to drive T&L change
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GRADUATE OUTCOMES
Life after university….
what does it hold for our graduates?
Educating students in a
worthwhile way
Thank you!
[email protected]
http://www.itl.usyd.edu.au
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