The National Graduate Attributes Project - Institute for Teaching and ...

Final Report – The National GAPAUSTRALIAN LEARNING AND TEACHING COUNCILUniversity of Georgia, Strathclyde University and Taylor's University College, twonon-universities, Southbank Institute of Technology and CPA Australia, and 31Australian universities. This series of events also disseminated 79 discretegraduate attributes initiatives presented as posters at the events. These postersare also disseminated digitally via the GAP website athttp://www.itl.usyd.edu.au/projects/nationalgap/resources/resources.htm. Thisseries of symposia also built on the international linkages the GAP team hadforged with the Scottish Quality Assurance Agency to extend dissemination.Representatives of the 20 Scottish universities responsible for the theme‘Graduates for the 21 st Century’, submitted seven posters. The entire set of 79posters from the third GAP symposia will be showcased at the 2010 Scottishnational QAA conference on this theme, thus extending the dissemination of thiswork internationally. An important aspect of dissemination addressed in this lastround of symposia focussed on engaging student groups with the GAP initiativeand resources. Over the five symposia, 17 student organisations presented theirperspective on the ‘Student-Centred’ issues identified by the GAP framework.Unfortunately, student groups appear to be rarely included in dissemination ofteaching and learning resources.An ongoing dissemination activity involved the distribution and use of the GAPIssues papers by participating Australian universities. Participants in the thirdGAP symposia were provided with a copy of GAP Issues paper booklet as prereadingand additional copies were distributed on the day. Importantly, thesymposia incorporated a discussion of how the GAP Issues papers might be usedto support institutional curriculum renewal to achieve graduate attributes. As aresult of these discussions, additional copies of the GAP booklet were providedon request for use in staff development activities, curriculum review meetings andas a resource on graduate certificate courses. Over 750 copies of the booklethave been distributed to date. Printed copies of the GAP Issues papers bookletare available on request and can also be downloaded as a PDF from the GAPwebsite.3.2. LinkagesThe development of a national community of practice with a shared scholarlyfocus on curriculum renewal to achieve graduate attributes was a key outcome ofthe National GAP, and hence both dissemination and linkages were integral to theproject methodology. The National GAP initiative built upon the project’s researchexpertise and leadership to forge successful new national and internationallinkages. Members of the GAP project team participated as Project Teammembers, Reference or Steering group members on six other ALTC projectsrelated to graduate attributes (for example, the Career Development Learningproject done on behalf of the National Association of Graduate Careers Advisorshttp://www.altc.edu.au/project-career-development-learning-maximising-uow-2007and the B-Factor Project http://www.altc.edu.au/project-increasing-institutionalsuccess-rmit-2007).As a result of the linkages established by members of theGAP Team the project was also invited to make presentations at five other ALTCnational dissemination events (for example the e-portfolio project’s AeP2symposium http://www.eportfoliopractice.qut.edu.au/symposium2/). The links withThe National Graduate Attributes Project: Integration and assessment of graduate attributes in curriculum 31