To ensure our students acquire these graduate attributes our Interconnected Curriculum must ensure the development of the following:
- Critical, creative and entrepreneurial thinking
- Information, digital and assessment literacy,
- Problem-solving and research skills
- Respect for equality, diversity and inclusivity
- Team working
- Socio-cultural, and global, awareness
- A commitment to personal and professional continued development
- Ethical thinking and action
- Argumentation and communication skills
- Independent learning and self-management
These represent the skills and attributes that employers say are missing from graduates, skills which they need to be successful in an interconnected world. It is important to think how any one of these 10 skills and behaviours, and the associated confidence of students in their ability to perform these skills and exhibit these behaviours, can be learnt. What kind of activities might help develop these skills and what assessment tasks would enable to demonstrate their mastery thereof?
These characteristics will be captured in the course/programme, level, and module, learning outcomes, which must align to the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications but may also be influenced by professional and statutory regulatory body (PSRB) requirements or apprenticeship standards (if applicable), and subject benchmark statements.
At UWL we expect all curricula to be jointly developed by those who teach on the programme, external experts and students. We expect our graduate attributes to drive our thinking about what needs to be developed within the curriculum and that learning outcomes at each level should align with those of the national standards. These then drive the type of assessment to be designed. Design must be informed by who our students are, (reapprovals) or might be, (approvals) on each course.
Our ‘assessment and feedback policy’ encourages the use of formative as well as summative assessment, ensuring that feedback can be used to enhance performance. In addition, we expect to see assessment which is authentic (i.e. the type of things students might be expected to do in the real world to advance their careers e.g. business pitches, simulations, evaluations, analyses, reports, performances). These allow students to apply their newly developed knowledge and can help eliminate academic misconduct. These assessments must be aligned to the learning outcomes and enable students to demonstrate their learning. Whilst it is good to vary assessment types, there needs to be a limit so that students can use feedback gained from one assessment type to be used to enhance their future performance in a similar assessment. Therefore, it is important that feedback relates directly to learning outcomes and assessment criteria, so we are always encouraging student progression.
