Graduate qualities and assessment
Overview
Assessment is the key to the development of Graduate Qualities.
There are two issues associated with this. First, assessment provides a significant incentive for students to engage in the learning experiences you have designed. Students make decisions about how best to spend their time and so if we really value particular kinds of learning then it makes sense to reward student involvement through the allocation of marks. Second, we can only give stakeholders the assurance that our students have actually achieved the Graduate Qualities we have intended through our curricula if we are able to point to evidence of their development. Assessment is the most obvious way of doing this.The central issue here is developing assessment tasks that provide opportunities for demonstration and development of the mix of Graduate Qualities identified in your course objectives and Graduate Qualities profile.
Graduate qualities and assessment
Graduate Qualities – a brief guide to assessing students for Graduate Qualities (PDF 55kb - download Adobe Acrobat) gives an outline of ways to assess students for graduate qualities. It contains a table which associates a number of the more common forms of assessment with their potential to assess particular Graduate Qualities. The list is not intended to be exhaustive but rather an indication of the kinds of assessment that may be used across the University.
There are a number of points that need to be made in regard to the table.
- The table is mainly focused on methods of assessment suitable for GQs 2, 3, 4 and 6. These are sometimes referred to as transferable skills or capabilities because they are the kinds of generic outcomes (regardless of field or discipline) that are seen as essential within the community.
- As all assessment must occur within the context of a field or discipline, all assessment has the potential to assess GQ1 to some degree. In any given assignment, however, you may choose to focus on other Qualities and, therefore, allocate the weight of marks to these.
- GQ5 (ethics and social justice) and GQ7 (international and cultural
perspectives) are different in nature from the other Qualities. They are
concerned with engendering particular value positions that operate
in and through a range of professional and community practices within specific social
contexts. To this extent, these Qualities reflect the unique characteristics of
the University of South Australia and their assessment is often best undertaken
in conjunction with other Qualities. They may be overtly linked to content (GQ1)
or process (GQs 2, 3 4 and 6) dimensions and so their assessment will reflect
the forms relevant to these Qualities.
For example, having an international perspective has implications for the knowledge base of a field or discipline (GQ1); being able to access information through international agencies (GQ2); understanding that creativity and problem solving may have cultural connotations (GQ3); having the ability to work in cross-cultural contexts (GQ4) and being able to communicate with those from other cultures (GQ6). For the purposes of the table, reference to GQs 5 and 7 have been omitted.
The first two columns of the table draw on
Main, Alex (1993). The development of preparation programs for new academic staff. DEET Higher Education Division, Evaluations and Investigations Program, Canberra: AGPS.
Reviewing assessment tasks for the assessment of
Graduate qualities
- Reviewing Assessment at UniSA- In a nutshell - 5 minute overview
- Program Evaluation Reports - Curriculum review- In a nutshell - 5 minute overview
- A GQ auditing spreadsheet (Excel 749kb) is available for you to audit the Graduate Qualities profile for your course and/or program against the assessment tasks.
Further information
- More resources on aspects of Graduate Qualities and other teaching topics can be found on the Learning Connection site
- A range of information for staff and students can be found on the Graduate Qualities homepage
- Further information and resources are available on the staff page in the Graduate Qualities site