Assessment and standards for graduate outcomes

Abstract

<p>Assessment drives what students learn and standards drive industry. In this paper we link the two and describe how we developed robust, practical standards for graduate skills that can be used to design learning tasks and rubrics to assess learning tasks. They act also as a clear statement to students about expectations for their learning as well as to industry on the standard of the graduates that universities are delivering.</p

Improving the Computational Thinking Pedagogical Capabilities of School Teachers

“…This is encouraging in so far as it demonstrates that targeted short-term professional development can have an impact upon teacher computational thinking pedagogical capabilities. However, there was potentially an opportunity for teachers to develop a better understanding of computational thinking perspectives, as this level of knowledge is important in order to help students appreciate the real-life value of what they are learning (Wood et al, 2011).…”

“…The last dimension is "computational perspectives" and this dimension is related to the views people form about the world around them and about themselves with relation to computational thinking problem solving. Wood, Thomas and Rigby (2011) consider this sort of professional understanding (i.e., "knowing for") as the highest level of knowledge that is critical for successful participation in the workforce. Without an appreciation of all three dimensions it is difficult for teachers to help students understand the concepts, practices and applications of the discipline, which in turn may adversely affect their enjoyment and success in the domain.…”

Implementation of a Curriculum Management Tool: Challenges Faced by a Large Australian University

“…Assessment tasks determine what students learn and form part of the students' learning journey in a unit and the whole program (Wood, Thomas, & Rigby, 2011;Wood, 2012). Assessment can be considered at four levelsclass, unit, program and accreditation.…”

Using standards rubrics to assure graduate capabilities within the context of undergraduate liberal arts programmes

“…This change in our pedagogical approach required a corresponding change in curriculum design to engage students in process-oriented learning (or capability- It is often asserted that students measure the curriculum in terms of assessment and that they orient their learning efforts primarily towards those aspects of the curriculum that will be assessed (Gibbs, 2003). Therefore if we are to encourage the attainment of graduate attributes, we should carefully design assessment tasks to clearly, explicitly and authentically develop graduate attributes (Wood et al, 2011). Equally, the purpose of assessment in this context must also be oriented towards enabling students to self-reflectively demonstrate their attainment of those graduate attributes or capabilities (Boud & Falchikow, 2006).…”

“…Many articles addressing graduate attributes begin with a discussion of how and why graduate attributes emerged in Australian universities (Barrie, 2006(Barrie, , 2012Green, 2009;Oliver et al, 2011;Wood et al, 2011;Donleavy, 2012;de la Harp & David, 2012). Almost all of these begin with a recognition that graduate attributes in the Australian context arose primarily out of a need to orient university education towards graduate employability and therefore to some measure of accountability to business and government.…”