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. Our syllabus organising principles were functions – comparing, defining, arguing – and genres – websites, emails, guidebooks, lectures, tutorials – to develop students’ academic competence. The principles of autonomy and critical evaluation were woven throughout the syllabus. We felt strongly that we needed to bring the academic community into the classroom.

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. We often start a section of work with a discussion of what lecturers say they want, because it’s important to be explicit to enable transfer. We were trying to incorporate ‘scholarship’.

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) These ideas are captured in the literature about graduate attributes. We became aware of GAs during the writing of the book.

Graduate Attributes Critical reflection Awareness of how knowledge is advanced A spirit of enquiry A global and ethical understanding Effective communication Autonomy Team working We felt we needed to check we were in step with this conceptual framework. We ended up retrofitting GAs explicitly into the syllabus

Retrofitting GAs A three-stage protocol for developing GAs Identify Analyse 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 We interrogated and presented the syllabus through the GA lens. This handout is from the document we used in the retrofitting process. As I talk you through it, I’ll be focusing on what you would see happening in the classroom, note any echoes with your own syllabus – questions welcome.

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 B2 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/dg4/linguistic/cadre1_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.