Phase 3: Filling the GAP - 2nd National Symposium; a national network for change
As part of the project we have sought to make links with other relevant ALTC projects and other stakeholder groups to learn of recent developments that should inform this study and to share our findings. In consultation with ALTC we have identified other relevant ALTC projects based on their:
- work on the challenge of achieving GA in a particular discipline context,
- work on particular part of the puzzle of achieving GA (eg assessment standards) or
- work on a strategy or pedagogy of particular relevance to GA (eg e-portfolios or WIL)
Other groups are welcome to contact us if they would like to be included on this list.
These projects were contacted with an invitation to share ideas and perspectives arising from their projects, to the mutual benefit of the project outcomes of all participants. This helped to establish a community of project teams with complementary expertise, and perspectives necessary, for a systems thinking approach to the achievement of graduate attributes through university learning and teaching.
As a first step we held a symposium of interested ALTC project teams to share ideas and discuss findings relevant to graduate attributes curriculum renewal on the 27th of October in Sydney. Various project teams, as well some members of the National GAP project reference group attended the meeting. Though unfortunately, Prof Richard Johnstone Executive Director of the ALTC, was unable to attend the meeting. Some of the topics that the project team representatives explored at the October Symposium were:
- Who are the people that might cooperate in future work on this topic?
- Are there different barriers to achieving graduate attributes in some disciplines?
- What are the latest in GA assessment tools and strategies?
- What is the role of WIL/PBL/CDL (and other acronyms!) as strategies for achieving graduate attributes?
- What can different groups within the university community contribute?
- What is the latest news on institutional strategies for embedding graduate attributes?
- What do students think about all this?
- What do professional groups think?
Each project team presented a poster that summarised their project's key drivers, outcomes and challenges. These posters can be found at the link below.