Graduate Capabilites and Sustainability
In the realm of higher education, a capability can be seen as the ability to perform based on the sum of a graduate’s expertise and capacity. These people might have the ability to integrate knowledge, skills, personal qualities and understanding in their personal and professional lives. Is there a capability set that each student should develop? If so and if we follow the drive to develop students who can act in a sustainable manner, then education for and about sustainability would need to be taken account of at Macquarie. How can this be done beyond elements of programs or units?
Following the academic re-structure and as Macquarie works toward a curriculum redesign in 2009 a number of projects have been established to help colleagues focus on aspects of learning and teaching that might be enhanced. The projects are being managed through working parties. One such project is focusing on developing a set of ‘capability statements’ for Macquarie and clearly there is an opportunity to include aspects of sustainability in these.
The graduate capability working party is currently meeting every fortnight and a set of draft capability statements are expected in the second quarter of 2008. Once agreed there will follow a ‘curriculum mapping’ exercise, which will help to identify where these capabilities are being developed and assessed, or indeed where they might be developed and assessed if they are not already.
For the majority of 2008 the work of the Learning and Teaching Action Group will be to maintain a dialogue with the graduate capability working party as it develops its statements, to observe and make comment on the mapping exercise relative to any sustainability capabilities, and to keep a watching brief over the curriculum redesign projects as a whole. These actions are maintained by the presence of Leanne Denby on the graduate capability working party and Ian Solomonides who has oversight of all the curriculum renewal projects. The five projects are: graduate capabilities, curriculum mapping, assessment and feedback, technologies in learning and teaching, and student engagement. In view of sustainability, it is likely that there will be some overlap and interrelationship within these.