Graduate Attributes in Syllabus
design for EAP
Retrofitting graduate attributes to an
existing syllabus
Outline
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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.
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.
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)
Graduate Attributes
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Critical reflection
Awareness of how knowledge is advanced
A spirit of enquiry
A global and ethical understanding
Effective communication
Autonomy
Team working
Retrofitting GAs
A three-stage protocol for developing
GAs
1. Identify
2. Analyse
3. 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
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.