Broad Curriculum Issues

Employers in those same studies demand that graduates possess a range of more generic, rather than knowledge based, skills. This has also been discussed in a report by the University of Alberta Senate. This is an area where most academics feel uncomfortable when developing curricula. Students also need to know the skills they have been developing as they develop their own 'profiles'.

In addition, a group of universities around the world has also committed themselves, in the Talloires Declaration, to placing a degree of environmental awareness in all subjects in university degree programs.

The following links and references review the importance of generic skills in curricula and university education in general.

1. Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research. A report from the US National Academy of Sciences that argues that undergraduates should have the opportunity to seek out interdisciplinary experiences spanning more than one traditional discipline.
   
   
2. Greater Expectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College. A report from the Association of American Universities and Colleges emphasizing the importance of liberal education.
   
   
3. Your First College Year: Findings from a survey instrument designed to measure students’ curricular and co-curricular experiences in their first year of post-secondary study.
   
   
4. Educating Future Scientists. An editorial in Nature 414:673(2001) inviting scientists to consider the trade offs between providing a less challenging curriculum and increasing participation in science.

 
5. SUCCESS by Degrees: a report by the University of Alberta Senate that includes Rod Fraser's skill sets for all graduates.

 
6. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada in discussing the quality of postsecondary education identifies five important learner outcomes for individual students at graduation:
• Learners and graduates have acquired a taste for lifelong learning and the capacity for self-directed study.
• Graduates exhibit field-specific learning, problem solving and analysis skills, and a capacity to access and use knowledge in their chosen area of study.
• Graduates are equipped with, in addition to field-specific knowledge, the skills required to search for, acquire, hold, or create employment. This includes effective oral and written communication skills, self-motivation, the ability to work independently and as part of a group, critical thinking, and problem solving.
• Graduates have the ability to participate fully as citizens in a democratic society. They have intercultural sensitivities, inter-personal competencies, and leadership skills. They have a capacity to deal with uncertainty and change.
• Graduates, whatever their areas of specialization, have the skills to deal with, in a discriminating fashion, the large volumes of complex information made available by communications and computer technologies and individual contacts.

 
7. The Dearing Report, of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education in the UK, says in its Recommendations 18 and 21:
• 18. We recommend that all institutions should over the medium term, identify opportunities to increase the extent to which programmes help students to become familiar with work, and help them to reflect on such experience.
• 21. We recommend that institutions of higher education begin immediately to develop, for each program they offer, a "programme specification" which identifies potential stopping-off points and gives the intended outcomes of the programme in terms of:
• the knowledge and understanding that a student will be expected to have upon completion:
• key skills: communication, numeracy, the use of information technology and learning how to learn:
• cognitive skills, such as an understanding of methodologies or ability in critical analysis:
• subject specific skills, such as laboratory skills.

 
8. The Association of Graduate Recruiters. 1995. Skills for Graduates of the 21st Century. A study led by Dr Peter Hawkins and written with Jonathan Winter, Whiteway Research, Cambridge, UK: The Association of Graduate Recruiters [Trotman, Australia], 49 pp., ISBN 0 9520999 1 8, $60.00

This report examines the qualities needed by UK university graduates. It includes a discussion of the challenges faced by higher education in providing graduates with the required skills.
 
9. The Talloires Declaration, in its Article 4, calls upon institutions of higher education to:

Create programs to develop the capability of university faculty to teach environmental literacy to all undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

10. Generic Skills. This site was originally prepared for the University of New South Wales and it gives more information, including material on student 'profiling'.

 
11. Australian Technology Network. This site review the Graduate Capabilities Project at five Australian universities.

 
12. Hertfordshire Integrated Learning Project. Follow links through 'Progress' to read their 'Graduate Skills Menu' material.

Further information on this topic can be obtained by contacting John Hoddinott.

© University of Alberta, 20050118.