Graduate attributes are a mechanism not only for developing employability skills, but also for fostering graduate abilities to be productive contributors to social change. There is growing recognition that university graduates can and should contribute to enhancing outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians signaling the need for dedicated Indigenous curriculum for all university students. Consider the transformative possibilities of significant numbers of graduates empowered to work effectively in partnership with Indigenous Australians. In 2014 almost 10,000 students graduated from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Reflecting the organisational culture, graduate attributes also illustrate the values of an institution. In 2014, responding to the Behrendt Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People (2012) call for whole of university approaches, UTS approved the development of an Indigenous Graduate Attribute (IGA) Framework for all university courses. Recognising that resources would be required to support the implementation of such an ambitious project, a proposal was made to establish an Indigenous academic expertise centre to support the implementation of IGAs in all courses. In this paper the Aboriginal academic staff leading the IGA project will draw on Critical Race Theory (CRT), including the work of Ladson-Billings, to reflect on our experiences in the first year of the project. We use CRT to highlight the ways in which institutions might work with Indigenous academics to optimise the success of complex projects such as the UTS Indigenous Graduate Attribute project.
A further goal was to evaluate the extent to which SFIA facilitates stakeholder interaction, such that academic programs can better identify industry needs while preparing graduates for the intended career role. The paper also evaluates the extent to which SFIA informs the identification of authentic forms of assessment and the skills and levels of autonomy and responsibility required by entry-level and Masters graduate ICT positions. Processes and practices for ICT curriculum design and management are recommended based on findings arising from this research. Although this research was conducted in an Australian context, findings suggest that there is value in using SFIA for ICT curriculum design and management, even in those jurisdictions where it is not required for accreditation or professional certification purposes.
COIL is an educational platform that promotes twenty-first century student competencies such as cross-cultural competence, teamwork and problem-solving skills through a collaborative coursework participated by students from different countries. The Learning Outcomes Value Cycle Framework (Gavilanez, Ortlieb, & Carey, 2017) is used to analyse the key components of the project including the project learning outcomes, learning activities and assessments. The 6-week Global COIL Project was designed for students to apply their classroom learning to realistic business scenarios and develop skills necessary in the global workplace. One hundred sixty-one (161) Management Accounting students from the two campuses worked together and communicated virtually in teams using Google Hangouts and other social media technologies to analyse and develop a solution to a simulated business scenario. The component-by-component analysis of the project revealed several pedagogical and practical challenges of COIL project design and implementation. Despite these challenges, COIL proved to be a promising educational platform that provides students with ample opportunities to develop a range of employability skills. This chapter highlights the motivations and challenges of designing and implementing a COIL project. Strategies for enhancement are also identified to ensure achievement of project learning outcomes. This chapter provides a valuable resource for academics who intend to introduce COIL or other cross-cultural collaborative projects in their courses.
Student learning outcomes assessment examines whether programs cover the material stated in their learning goals, whether students are learning the material, and the impact on student retention, graduation, post-graduation outcomes, and institutional accreditation, with the aim of providing faculty with data that can be used to help programs evolve or improve. While there is a plethora of research regarding effective methods of assessment used in the United States, little has been written regarding cross-national comparisons of assessment methodologies. This paper examines the current state of assessment in several nations and regions, and draws parallels in practices across countries. A literature search using the term "outcomes assessment" yielded 228 articles, of which, only 35 described practices outside the United States. Generally, searches on the terms "outcomes assessment" and "global" tend to return studies of outcomes assessment of teaching about global issues as it is practiced in the United States, rather than results about outcomes assessment practices used in other countries.
Capstone projects have been an established vehicle of student–industry engagement in a university setting. In engineering, capstone projects are a point of transition from student to professional , as student engineers gain practical work experience and apply their technical skills and knowledge for an industry-proposed design, research, and/or development challenge. In this paper, we report on a supplementary program—the Technical Leadership Program (TLP)—which was designed and delivered for students to hone their technical leadership skills within a capstone project. To report on the outcomes of this case study, we use a student-as-partners philosophy to share the case study as a series of vignettes from co-authors who participated in the TLP. These have been collated into four key thematic areas including building awareness through technical leadership; building a personal repertoire of leadership; creating a common platform for collaboration; and transitioning into a professional workplace environment. The reflections are then shown to map to relevant competencies in technical leadership. Alongside these themes, the paper shares the design of the TLP delivery and reflects on the challenges and benefits of this mechanism to enhance student experience.
Constructive alignment (CA) has become internationally established as an educational approach linking strategic planning and corporate policy to discipline and course teaching and learning practice. The literature to date has focused predominantly on either single institutional or specific discipline settings and curriculum level initiatives. This research study seeks to broaden the conceptual and methodological perspective on constructive alignment with a cross-institutional study from two Australian universities. The case study learnings from a top-down institutional implementation of CA at one university and the bottom–up teaching and learning approach within the other have been jointly investigated. By mapping the implementation process of constructive alignment, the key strength and constraints for both approaches have been identified. These findings offer new insights for institutional managers as well as academics and teaching and learning professionals. In addition, a potential ‘gap in the middle’ at faculty level is highlighted. It is within this nexus that the transitions from institutional policy and targets to successful discipline-specific teaching and learning practices and outcomes are shaped. This research seeks to raise the awareness that CA design, planning and implementation should be conceptualised from the outset as a dynamic, multi-directional and iterative process, irrespective of whether a predominantly top-down or bottom-up approach for implementation is chosen.
Most recent academic literature favours a broad definition of curriculum as a process for connecting and integrating university learning and teaching into coherent and meaningful educational experiences for students. However, in an environment seen as increasingly more complex and commercial, the term curriculum continues to be used in differing or undefined ways, often limited to a focus on the content and structure of programs. The concept appears ubiquitous in higher education but there has been limited explicit use of the term. Over the last two decades a notable increase in research into curriculum in higher education has occurred, notably in Australia and the surrounding region. A range of current issues, such as internationalization, blended learning, curriculum mapping, and research-related learning have reinvigorated interest in curriculum. Greater attention needs to be given to evaluation of curriculum initiatives, while the future currency of the term will depend on a realization of its utility.