Engaging staff and students with graduate attributes across diverse curricula landscapes

Abstract

The alignment of curricula with desired generic higher education learning outcomes, widely referred to as graduate attributes, has been on the agenda for some time. To be implemented widely, graduate attribute initiatives must accommodate variations in curricular landscape between and within institutions, disciplines and programs. QUT Faculty of Business is a partner (along with University of Sydney, University of Technology, Sydney, and University of Queensland) in the ongoing Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded project Facilitating Staff and Student Engagement Graduate Attribute Development, Assessment and Standards in Business Faculties. Each project partner is implementing and evaluating strategies and tools, and the extent to which students and staff can be engaged with a focus on higher level attributes, into the assessment procedures of units in their faculties. This paper describes the progress of this project and the use of the ReView software tool within the QUT Faculty of Business, where three distinctly different units have participated. These units include 1) a high enrolment undergraduate first year core unit, 2) a capstone unit for students in a particular major, and 3) a graduate unit with a high percentage of international students. The adaptation of high level strategies to accommodate institutional, student and operational diversities is elaborated and discussed. A significant reflection of project staff participants has been their increased appreciation of the differences between the ways curricula is structured, documented and administered in Business faculties of partner institutions, and how that impacts upon applying graduate attribute engagement strategies and tools. Also, technological tools, such as the ReView software application, which is being utilised across the project, must cope with varying local requirements. The differences between the three QUT units include such characteristics as numbers and profiles of students, curricular purpose, the integration of Learning Management Systems and other technologies, and size of teaching teams.