scholarly journals Assessment-focused Model for Monitoring Student Attributes

Author(s):  
Dawn Macisaac ◽  
Chris Diduch ◽  
Esam Hussein

Faculty at the University of New Brunswick have worked collaboratively to develop a streamlined monitoring process for graduate attributes intended to be easy to understand, efficient, and comply with intentions laid out by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board. The monitoring process is made up of two parts: An assessment-focused model for monitoring student progress, and a course mapping exercise for monitoring learning opportunities. In monitoring student progress, typical student assessments are used as opportunities for students to demonstrate that expectations are being met in the context of attributes. This provides a transparent mechanism for instructors to produce evidence that their students are developing attributes. To date, expectations for six of the twelve attributes have been articulated in a rubric, and four of the attributes have been tracked. Our experience thus far indicates that our monitoring process allows us 1) to uniformly express expectations regarding graduating student attributes across programs, 2) to indentify assessments which provide opportunities for our students to demonstrate the behaviors outlined in our expectations, and 3) to use results of the assessments to easily summarize data about the attributes of our graduating students.

Author(s):  
Margaret Gwyn

When faced with assessing the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) graduate attributes, most programs will start by focusing oninstructor assessments. Course instructors are uniquely positioned to assess their students’ learning, and instructor assessments are sufficient to meet CEAB accreditation requirements. However, for a full picture, data from multiple sources is always desirable. At the University of Victoria, we have chosen to include co-op employer and student assessments in our graduateattribute assessment plan. In this paper, we present the assessment tools we have identified and created, and outline the system we have developed to sustainably produce assessment reports every term for every program. We highlight some of the challenges we have faced, and conclude by discussing our future plans


Author(s):  
Steven Dew ◽  
Robert Driver ◽  
Glen Thomas ◽  
Mrinal Mandal ◽  
Phillip Choi

The recent Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) requirements mandating a graduate attributes (GA) assessment and continuous improvement process present a potentially huge burden for assessment, analysis and data management. Designing a robust GA management system and scaling to a large multi-program engineering faculty represents a significant challenge. This paper presents a hierarchical approach developed at the University of Alberta to address these challenges for one of the largest programs in Canada. A set of specific overarching principles has allowed us to significantly reduce the overall task. Key aspects include the exploitation of common indicators and measures where possible. The system currently employs 451 measures and 93,240 individual student assessments vs potentially about 1000 measures and 106 student assessments for a similar, but naïve, approach. A multiyear strategy is described to monitor progress and demonstrate a continuous improvement system.


Author(s):  
Samira ElAtia ◽  
Jason P. Carey ◽  
Bashair Alibrahim ◽  
Marnie V. Jamieson

After 2009, accredited Canadian engineering schools began to develop processes to map the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board-Graduate Attributes(CEAB-GAs) to their curriculum and integrate ways to measure them. At around the same time, several Canadian universities embarked on a process to identifytheir own University-wide Graduate Attribute (UGAs).  UGAs are assumed to be applicable across study disciplines; i.e. the university experience as a whole.To address the need to assess students on the basis of the CEAB GAs and the UGAs in the Faculty of Engineering and develop the basis for an integrated graduate attribute management system, an interdisciplinary team conducted a yearlong qualitative study with the purpose of exploringthe intersection of the UGAs with CEAB-GAs. The key objectives were to develop a mapping process between the two sets and to explore management strategies for assessing both sets of graduate attributes. Two independent teams performed the mapping exercise using a sequential mixed methods study design. A qualitative exploratory mapping study was followed by a quantitative aggregation of the mapping results. Integration of the qualitative and quantitative study results was completed as part of the interpretation of the results. Both forward and backward mapping took place. Results demonstrated that, although generic, UGAs may not necessarily capture specific professional program graduate attributes such as the CEAB-GAs. The study also highlighted the need for more revisions and updates of UGAs by including various stakeholders who can substantially contribute to implementation and assessment of UGAs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 096100062110055
Author(s):  
Clare Thorpe ◽  
Lyndelle Gunton

The United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development identifies 17 goals as a shared blueprint for peace, prosperity, people and the planet. Australian academic libraries have started documenting and planning how academic libraries contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the identification of assessment frameworks and key performance indicators. In 2019, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Library stepped through an exercise of understanding how our day-to-day work and annual planning targets mapped to the SDGs. The article is a case study. The authors outline how an academic library’s services, projects and action plans were mapped to the SDGs and how the mapping exercise was communicated to the community. The article will situate this activity among the broader approaches being taken by the Australian library community, including the 2030 stretch targets for Australian libraries. USQ Library staff found that existing services, collections and projects correlated to eight of the 17 SDGs. Activities were mapped to these eight goals and reported to senior executive of the University. The mapping exercise increased the awareness of library staff about the broader cultural and societal implications of their roles. The communication strategy led to conversations that increased university leaders’ awareness of the SDGs and the value and impact of USQ Library in improving access to information as well as the library’s role in transforming the lives of USQ students and community. By undertaking an exercise to map collections, services and projects to the SDGs, USQ Library has been able to demonstrate how their knowledge and information infrastructures which enable student achievement and research excellence. The SDGs can be used by university libraries as a benchmarking tool and as a challenge to set stretch targets aligned with the United Nation’s 2030 agenda.


Author(s):  
Rui Zhao ◽  
Wan-Bing Shi

The graduate attributes of the University of Sydney innovatively include the enabling conceptions and the translation conceptions of attributes and ensure that they are specifically oriented, reasonably structured and comprehensively designed. These scientifically constructed graduate attributes of the University of Sydney prove strong efficiency by the university taking up a high position in QS Graduate Employability Rankings in recent years. Chinese top-level universities, in the process of building world-class universities, also face the task of revising the graduate attributes and substantially enhancing the quality of talents cultivation, and can, therefore, learn the successful experience to revise their own graduate attributes on the basis of universities’ history, vision and specialty, on the premise of a sound cognition of the connotation, levels, and relationship of graduate attributes, and by means of System Theory, Phenomenography and comparative study.


1973 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-304
Author(s):  
Daymon W. Thatch ◽  
William L. Park

Rutgers University was chartered as Queen's College on November 10, 1766. It was the eighth institution of higher education founded in Colonial America prior to the Revolutionary War. From its modest beginning in the New Brunswick area the University has grown to eight separately organized undergraduate colleges in three areas of the State, with a wide range of offerings in liberal and applied arts and sciences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bjartmarsdóttir ◽  
Deborah L. Mole

The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) is an open enrollment university that offers vocational, academic, and professional degrees in a northern region. UAA serves a culturally and demographically diverse population. Given this diversity, students display varying levels of information literacy (IL) competencies. Library Professors Anna Bjartmarsdóttir and Deborah Mole partner with faculty teaching composition and communication courses to create increasingly sophisticated and transferable IL learning opportunities. Strategies include: assessing students’ IL competencies; creating engaging activities; integrating IL throughout the semester; developing reflection opportunities to reinforce IL skills. UAA librarians, partnered with faculty, integrate and scaffold IL activities in foundational GE courses to develop increasingly sophisticated, transferable IL skills and knowledge practices. From team-based learning application exercises to workshops for teaching assistants, students learn how creativity partnered with initiative has helped to integrate transferable IL skill education at this diverse arctic university.


SURG Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
Melanie Barry ◽  
Shannon Ferraro ◽  
Kaitlyn Wagner

ZOO*4300 (Marine Biology and Oceanography) is a senior-level field course offered by the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph. This two-week course is held at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrew’s New Brunswick, Canada. Students enrolled in the course study various aspects of the ecology, behaviour, physiology, biochemistry and genetics of marine organisms using a variety of oceanographic techniques. The course also includes group exercises to study various intertidal and sub-tidal environments as well as boat cruises to collect plankton, benthic invertebrates, marine fish, and to observe marine mammals. The course provides excellent opportunities for students to familiarize themselves with state-of-the-art techniques involved in various branches of marine biology and oceanography and conduct an individual research project. This feature highlights three individual research projects by University of Guelph students. More information about the field course in marine biology and oceanography is accessible at the following link: http://www.uoguelph.ca/ib/undergrad/fieldcourses_marine.shtml.


2009 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 575-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. M. van der Ende ◽  
C. Winslade ◽  
R. L. Brooks ◽  
R. H. deLaat ◽  
N. P.C. Westwood

Optical transitions from two microwave discharge excited states of argon have been observed using cavity ring-down spectroscopy. These transitions originate on the high-lying levels, 3d[1/2] 1° and 3d[3/2] 2° , and terminate on the nf ′[5/2] Rydberg (n = 8 to 22) levels, which, except for n = 8, lie between the 2P3/2 and 2P1/2 ionization thresholds. In total, 24 such spectral lines have been observed. The quantum defect for the f ′ series has been measured and is compared to previously measured values. We observe a nearly threefold jump in line width in going from n = 8 to n = 9, below and above the 2P3/2 threshold, respectively. The line widths are broad and increase monotonically with n (above 9), in contrast to the narrowing of line widths usually observed. We cannot attribute this to a single source but conclude that collisional, quasielastic l-mixing of the nf ′[5/2] Rydberg states plays a significant role.


Author(s):  
Julie Fleming ◽  
Robyn Donovan ◽  
Colin Beer ◽  
Damien Clark

This chapter reflects on the processes involved in managing a curriculum mapping exercise aimed at integrating graduate attributes across CQUniversity’s undergraduate programs. Most of these programs are offered via distance education. Due to the complexity of program offerings and the dispersed campus locations, a whole of university approach was needed to address quality and consistency of graduate outcomes. In order to achieve this, an audit of existing course graduate attributes was conducted using an online mapping tool. While the whole of university approach served to provide cohesion within the project, there were some challenges regarding the perceived top-down approach. This chapter serves to inform senior management of the complexities of managing resistance to change within an academic community. It is envisaged that this reflection will assist with future projects that require a whole of university approach.


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