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Griffith University, University of Melbourne, Queensland University of Technology

Kerri-Lee Krause et al 's work:

A whizzy new resource from Australia on this whole issue:

http://www.trnexus.edu.au/

University of Sydney

Academic attitudes towards the development of graduate attributes as evidenced at University of Sydney

Institutional values:

At the University of Sydney, academics in the Faculties have been encouraged to draw up statements of devolved Faculty-oriented graduate attributes using a model developed by Simon Barrie. In the process of doing this it became clear that academics divided into “four increasingly complex understandings of the nature of graduate attributes as outcomes” (Barrie, 2006). In this hierarchy Barrie discovered:

a. remedial approaches (often linked to assumptions about what should have occurred at school)

b. development approaches done through learning centres rather than within the discipline (often linked to compartmentalizing generic skills as separate to disciplinary syllabus / curriculum) “supplementary sets of useful skills to complement subject material” – ‘add ons’.

c. attributes are designed around how students apply abstract knowledge to a practical ‘real world’. This involves translating what is learned in the university to subsequent contexts. This results in disciplines embedding generic skills within their programmes, with academics in the disciplines taking the responsibility for them, translating generic skills into discipline-specific skills; Academics integrate this by one of three approaches: adding lectures (content); undertaking problem/practice simulations (process); encouraging engagement.

d. generic attributes at the heart of the learning environment.

Links to the graduate attributes as defined by the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Social Sciences can be found at: