Graduate Attributes in Syllabus design for EAP Retrofitting

Graduate Attributes in Syllabus design for EAP Retrofitting graduate attributes to an existing syllabus

Outline • • • Discussion of your own syllabus Access EAP: Frameworks – aims and themes Retrofitting Graduate Attributes to syllabus Constructive alignment in a syllabus Pre-sessional syllabus at Heriot-Watt Over to you for discussion and comment

Discussion • With a partner describe a syllabus you have designed or one you have used for teaching. • How did the designer decide what components to include? • How does the syllabus achieve the principles of development, recycling and transferability? • How did the designer make the academic community a tangible presence in the classroom?

Access EAP: Frameworks • Based on real university life, situations and tasks. • Unit themes explore aspects of what lecturers expect students to do at university. • Example students are case studies illustrating the typical student experience. • Aims to help students to achieve a high level of academic performance.

Achieving principles in syllabus design • Development – increasing cognitive demands of functions – description, explanation, argument – and genres – emails, guidelines, research articles • Recycling – reusing concepts and key language introduced earlier, e. g. explaining problems requires cause/effect to analyse the problem & comparison/contrast to evaluate solutions • Transferability – student case studies show typical students engaging with academic situations, tasks and challenges.

Graduate attributes • 'the skills, knowledge and abilities of university graduates, beyond disciplinary content knowledge, which are applicable to a range of contexts and are acquired as a result of completing any undergraduate degree'. Barrie (2006: 217)

Graduate Attributes • • Critical reflection Awareness of how knowledge is advanced A spirit of enquiry A global and ethical understanding Effective communication Autonomy Team working

Retrofitting GAs A three-stage protocol for developing GAs 1. Identify 2. Analyse 3. Align

Retrofitting Graduate Attributes • Confirmed our intuitions about bringing the academic community into the classroom • Helped us to broaden and deepen our understanding of scholarship • Made us contextualise more explicitly • Enabled us to talk about the syllabus with students in terms that are shared with their subject lecturers and the wider institution

Constructive alignment in syllabus

GAs on a pre-sessional: Heriot-Watt • Pre-sessional syllabus driven by assessments • Authentic academic tasks contextualized within students’ disciplines • Students responsible for subject-specific content • Access EAP: Frameworks platform for developing language and academic competence

GAs on a pre-sessional: Heriot-Watt • Graduate Attributes are high level aims • Adapted Common European framework of Reference for Languages proficiency descriptors for level B 2 as learning outcomes • Added learning outcomes derived from GAs • Team development activity with colleagues so all had ownership of the syllabus design http: //www. coe. int/t/dg 4/linguistic/cadre 1_en. asp 10. 5. 17

How real and useful are GAs? • Contribute to the commodification and marketization of higher education? • Provide challenging content that meets students’ needs for future academic study. • Pin down the more nebulous aspects of critical thinking and student autonomy. • Help teachers in justifying lesson content to students and colleagues. • Enable teachers to frame their talk using concepts the institution understands.

Over to you • In the syllabus you described earlier can you identify Graduate Attributes? • Do you label these explicitly? • How are students made aware they are developing academic competence? • Choose one or two of the Graduate Attributes and think about how you would retrofit your syllabus to present it explicitly to students.