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

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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, s, 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.

5. Achieving principles in syllabus design
Development – increasing cognitive demands of functions – description, explanation, argument – and genres – s, 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’.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. Retrofitting GAs A three-stage protocol for developing GAs Identify
Analyse
Align

9. 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.

10. Constructive alignment in syllabus

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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.

14. 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.