Integration of the graduate profiles and academic literacy capabilities into the academic curricula: An undergraduate Year 1 case-study

Abstract

Achieving constructive alignment in curriculum and assessment design is one of the key challenges for faculty teaching staff and course coordinators. A primary driver for this alignment is the attainment of specific capabilities defined through graduate profiles, employability-driven needs, disciplinary knowledge and practice. Traditionally teaching staff has considered content first rather than the way students learn and acquire these capabilities. With the recent focus on course learning outcomes, however, a parallel commitment has emerged to develop student academic literacies and integrate these ‘seamlessly’ rather than ‘add them on’ into the curriculum. To integrate academic and information literacy (AIL) skills into the academic curricula at individual course level, as well as at undergraduate and research-postgraduate levels, involves a longitudinal team-based collaboration between faculty teaching staff, course coordinators, learning designers, academic advisers, subject / liaison librarians and learning support librarians. At The University of Auckland, New Zealand, several AIL collaborations have been undertaken resulting in the integration of the Graduate Profile (2017) attributes and employability capabilities into the curriculum design, assessment and teaching and learning pedagogy. During this process, different forms of curriculum analysis, adjustments, design and blended learning innovations have taken place. This case study describes the process of transforming the SOCIOL 100: Issues and Themes in Sociology course curricula to accommodate students’ learning needs and develop transferable capabilities as defined in the newly released Graduate Profile. The course is offered twice during an academic year and has approximately 1000 enrolments, resulting in a heavy teaching and marking workload. We present the process of gathering learning analytics data from the Canvas learning management system to identify key year 1 students’ needs in relation to study, essay writing and exam preparation support, and the way our findings have been applied in the online assessment activity design, in conjunction with the First Year Experience programme and targeted learning sessions of the Faculty of Arts. The project team engaged the following methods to obtain and analyse data and apply the informed learning design to address key threshold concepts and create a variety of academic and information literacy learning and assessment activities: • Design and release of a week 1 diagnostic quiz and produce analysis report to identify students’ learning needs/gaps; • Analyse web usage data from previous course iterations; • Obtain feedback from students using Qualtrics online surveying tool on blended learning activities they have completed; • Map identified needs with newly released UoA graduate capabilities; • Develop weekly online quizzes • Re-develop SOC 100: Academic skills online modules (Being sociological; Succeeding in this course; Test preparation; Starting the essay; Research; Crafting your essay; Preparing for the exam; Cite & reference) to enable blended learning engagement and consistent scaffolding/progression of learning; • Employ SRES Reporter to harvest learning analytics data from Canvas (course LMS) • Design and integrate the new trigger assessment (5% course mark) into the course structure and timeline; • Integrate e-learning activities, quizzes and assessment into the SOC 100 Canvas weekly modules. The impact of the intervention into the year 1 course curriculum and assessment design will be discussed based on the findings of the Course and Teaching Evaluations (Semester 1 2017 cohort) and data analysis.