1. Using authentic learning to develop graduate attributes Vivienne Bozalek University of the Western Cape vbozalek@uwc.ac.za

2. Structure of presentation Curriculum alignment vs authentic learning for achieving graduate attributes Graduate attributes Authentic learning elements Research done at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) on authentic learning A case study illustrating authentic learnng and graduate attributes Conclusion 3. Developing graduate attributes Increasing emphasis of graduate attributes in higher education How best to develop these attributes in higher education and embed them in curriculum One possible way is through constructive alignment (Biggs, 2012) Another possibility is through authentic learning (Herrington et al., 2010) 4. What are Graduate Attributes? Graduate attributes are the qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution and consequently shape the contribution they are able to make to their profession and society ... They are qualities that also prepare graduates as agents of social good in unknown futures. (Bowden et al., 2000) 5. What would UWC Graduate Attributes for the 21st Century look like? 6. Two tiers of graduate attributes (Barrie, 2004) Tier 1 complex interwoven aspects of human ability (Barrie, 2006:3) attributes that allow graduates to prosper in an uncertain world of change (Barnett, 2004) UWC Charter generic attributes: scholarship, citizenship and the social good, lifelong learning Tier 2 * Clusters of personal skills and abilities (UWC charter) Inquiry-focused and knowledgeable Critically and relevantly literate Autonomous and collaborative Ethically, Environmentally and Socially Aware and Active Skilled Communicators Interpersonal flexibility and confidence to engage across difference 7. UWC Charter of Graduate Attributes First Tier SCHOLARSHIP: A critical attitude towards knowledge: UWC graduates should be able to demonstrate a scholarly attitude to knowledge and understanding within the context of a rapidly changing environment. UWC graduates should have the ability to actively engage in the generation of innovative and relevant knowledge and understanding through inquiry, critique and synthesis. They should be able to apply their knowledge to solve diverse problems and communicate their knowledge confidently and effectively. CRITICAL CITIZENSHIP AND THE SOCIAL GOOD: A relationship and interaction with local and global communities and the environment: UWC graduates should be engaged, committed and accountable agents of social good. They must aspire to contribute to social justice and care, appreciative of the complexity of historical contexts and societal conditions through their roles as professionals and members of local and global communities. They should demonstrate leadership and responsibility with regard to environmental sustainability. LIFELONG LEARNING: An attitude or stance towards themselves: UWC graduates should be confident Lifelong Learners, committed to and capable of continuous collaborative and individual learning and critical reflection for the purpose of furthering their understanding of the world and their place in it. Graduate Attributes and curriculum alignment 2013/07/11 8. UWC Charter of Graduate Attributes SecondTier 1. Inquiry-focused and knowledgeable: UWC graduates will be able to create new knowledge and understanding through the process of research and inquiry 2. Critically and relevantly literate: UWC graduates will be able to seek, discern, use and apply information effectively in a range of contexts. 3. Autonomous and collaborative: UWC graduates will be able to work independently and in collaboration with others, in a way that is informed by openness, curiosity and a desire to meet new challenges. 4. Ethically, Environmentally and Socially Aware and Active: UWC graduates should be critical and responsible members of local, national, international and professional communities. They should also demonstrate a thorough knowledge of ethical, social, cultural and environmental issues relating to their disciplines and make professional and leadership decisions in accordance with these principles. 5. Skilled Communicators: UWC graduates should recognise and value communication as a tool for negotiating and creating new understanding, interacting with diverse others, and furthering their own learning. They should use effective communication as a tool to engage with new forms of complexity in social and working life. 6. Interpersonal flexibility and confidence to engage across difference: UWC graduates should be able to interact with people from a variety of backgrounds and have the emotional insight and imagination to understand the viewpoints of others. They should be able to work in a productive team, to lead where necessary and to contribute their skills as required to solving complex problems. Graduate Attributes and curriculum alignment 2013/07/11 9. Herringtons nine elements of authentic learning Authentic context Authentic task Expert performance Multiple perspectives Collaboration Reflection Articulation Coaching and scaffolding Assessment 10. Authentic Context 11. Second Life 3D immersive environment 12. Looking after a fish as an authentic learning task 13. Authentic learning using a fish tank 14. Blog on fish tank 15. Access to expert Performances and modelling of processes 16. Guest lectures: Remix Company 17. TELL ME YOUR RACE THEN I WILL GIVE YOU OUR IDENTITY Guest lectures: local artist: Bernie Searle 18. Performing poetry Gabeba Baderoon Diana Ferrus 19. Collaborative construction of knowledge 20. Collaborative construction and assessment of knowledge 21. Reflection (Schn 1983). Reflection in action and reflection on action(Schn 1983). 22. Community, Self and Identity: A Virtual Learning Community across two South African Universities Poul Rohleder Wendy Lee Fish Amanda Ismael Lisa Padfield Deborah Platen 23. ZPD This is the teaching space; this is the knowledge gap! Teacher provides skills, strategies and links to be able to complete the task Coaching and scaffolding Outcome of deep learning, Relational conceptual understanding. The student: world of experience, Unstructured Knowhow &/or Surface learning Mediated learning for understanding 24. Assessment Use Powerpoint to prepare a presentation on the relationship between identity, community and professional practice. The presentation should cover: Notions of community, self and identity. Remaining questions, tensions and contradictions for the group. Implications of the above for professional practice in social work, occupational therapy and psychology. You will be assessed on the basis of your presentation, and the notes used for the presentation. Critical and creative presentations are encouraged. Your presentations should contain references to the workshops, postings and readings. They should show an understanding of the complexity of the notions of identity, community and the human professions, and should reflect a critical appreciation of different viewpoints. In your presentation, ensure that you have considered how raced, gendered and classed histories and differing experiences and values inform professional identities and practices. Your powerpoint presentation should be no longer than ten slides, containing a maximum of 80 words per slide (to be presented in 15 minutes; 5 minutes for questions). 25. Part of National Research Foundation (NRF) project Target group: lecturers that are known to be open to/engaged with technology Sent by email to contacts in all public HEIs institution (22) in August/September 2011, snowball sampling Content: 3 parts, demographic, tools and open ended questions around practice with Emerging Technologies (ET) Respondents: 262 (by 30 September 2011) Selection of 20 respondents, for further indepth interviews on how emerging technology is being used to provide and authentic learning experience for students Sub-set of 10 UWC staff members were interviewed as part of this research. The collected data was analysed independently by two researchers of the NRF project using the following coding system: 0 no evidence, 1 weak evidence, 2 strong evidence of authentic learning elements. Discrepancies were averaged after discussion. Indepth interviews at UWC 26. Lecturers interviewed at UWC 27. Elements engaged with by UWC lecturers 28. Inter-rater scores for authentic principles of UWC lecturers who were interviewed 29. Elements Graduate Attribute Tier 1 Graduate Attribute Tier 2 Case study of physiotherapy lecturer Authentic Context Barnett's idea of complexity and uncertainty scholarship lifelong learning Critically and relevantly literate (2) Ethically, environmenta lly and socially aware and active (4)* In order to teach physiotherapy, the educator has developed written cases to improve the clinical reasoning process; . We introduce and encourage the idea of uncertainty and we try and give the students opportunities to learn how to be comfortable with the complexity and uncertainty of the clinical context and then to give them skills to navigate that uncertainty- rather than just being flawed and overwhelmed by all the different variables. We need to give them skills now for then to able to go into the real world and say I dont have this answer, now what do I know, what do I need to find out, how will I find out. 30. Elements Graduate Attribute Tier 1 Graduate Attribute Tier 2 Case study of physiotherapy lecturer Authentic task scholarship Inquiry- focused In the past we would have lectured on a series of conditions and say these are the conditions that you need to be aware of now what we do we give them a case and each case runs every 3 weeks every week we introduce complexity to the case so we add more information - sometimes we give readings, sometimes there is a video that they have to go and watch but all the time we are building on what they know and then what they need to know and we are trying to make the cases typical presentations of what you might expect in a South African context 31. Elements Graduate Attribute Tier 2 Case study of physiotherapy lecturer Expert performance Inquiry focused (1) critically and relevantly literate (2) One of the 1st assignments we did in this module was we gave them a task where they had some readings and they had to develop a list of criteria that they would use to establish credibility in online sources Multiple perspectives Interpersonal flexibility (6) You can have clinicians who would disagree on appropriate management strategies for patients and how do you negotiate kind of a compromise between what you think is right and what someone else thinks is right so we do try and model that. What we will often do is students will ask me a question and I will say well this is what I think but let me just grab this other person who I know has a different view and then we pull facilitators into the conversation and then we discuss the difference in the view point and model to the students that often times there is no right answer. 32. Elements Graduate Attribute Tier 2 Case study of physiotherapy lecturer Coaching and scaffolding Critically and relevantly literate (2) Interpersonal flexibility (6) So in terms of scaffolding students have to have a base and from that base they can build, if the base is shaky we try and design the case so that its difficult for them to proceed without having an understanding of what they did in the beginning. Feedback - we try and encourage all the facilitators to give feedback in the form of a question rather than saying this is wrong, this is right, this is excellent. So even this is excellent is not useful feedback because students has no way to go from that. we guide facilitators on how to give feedback so in terms of the scaffolding I think we try and always say why do you say that? What are you basing that on? Reflection Skilled communicators (5) Interpersonal flexibility (6) We model reflection we go on and on about how reflection is really important for professional development, there is just this block with the students where its just thinking we talk about if you dont have any emotional investment in what you are doing then but the students are very resistant to reflection. 33. Tier 2 Assessment Critically and relevantly literate (2) At the end of every term the students have to submit a clinical file which is a collection of documentation that they have gathered that relates to their patients contact so there is a clinical evaluation tool where there are patients documentation notes, reflections, they have set learning objectives Collaboration Autonom ous and collaborat ive (3) They are in different groups. When they go out in a clinical practice they are in one group and in the classroom they are in a different group and the idea is that students learn things on a clinical experience and they bring it back to the classroom experience so on the Monday morning they set aside time where they discuss the patient they saw the previous Thursday and we try to get them to bring their own clinical stories back into the classroom and then the facilitators can discuss those experiences. We try to build in collaboration we dont give them notes they have to collaboratively build the notes in their groups with inputs from facilitators. Articulation Skilled communi cators (5) Inquiry focused (1) At the end of every case each group has to have a set of case notes where they have drawn up about their understanding of this particular patient. Every group must do a full case presentation that they are graded on at the end of each case. We challenge every single statement that the student makes that is not explicitly guided by a reason 34. Discussion Resonance with what would be required for a beginner physiotherapist desired attributes Coherence between graduate attributes and authentic learning To acquire graduate attributes students need to be active learners inquiry-focused approach to teaching Learners needs must be responded to sensitively Lecturers shouldnt set themselves up as sole repositories of knowledge Can use emerging technologies to promote authentic learning and graduate attributes (Google Drive) Critical citizenship and the social good not really achieved in the case study the other two tier one attributes scholarship and lifelong learning were achieved 35. Conclusion The case study provided an example of how effective the elements of authentic learning can be in developing the values, skills and attributes that a university student should have acquired at the end of their degree It would seem that only by engaging students in authentic tasks which have their focus on real world consequences and learning, is it possible to develop the requisite attributes for employability Authentic learning is thus a useful framework through which to develop graduate attributes as it is forward- looking, providing a way of situating learning in its context for future use in the workplace and as critical citizens, which graduate attributes are aiming towards. 36. References Barrie, S. C. 2006.Understanding what we mean by the generic attributes of graduates. Higher Education 51(2): 21541. Barnett, R. 2004. Learning for an unknown future. Higher Education Research and Development 14 (3): 247-260. Biggs, J. 2012. 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