Assessment for Competencies Needed AFTER Graduation:

Liberal Arts more than a training ground for discipline

thinkers!

David Finney, Champlain CollegeVicky Gunn, University of Glasgow

Donna Qualters, Tufts University

Goals for the session:

• Discuss the role of Liberal Arts Post Graduation

• Highlight the importance of assessment of liberal arts competencies for post graduation preparation

• Share ideas from University of Glasgow

• Explore the opportunities and challenges in the US to learn from the Glasgow experience

Let’s get started!

1. At your table – think of the your own education and then think of the position you currently hold.

2. List for yourselfCompetencies (knowledge, skills or professional attitudes)

that your university education prepared you for success in your current position

Competencies you were NOT prepared for by your education post graduation

Where you learned the competencies needed for success

My Example:English Major Direct a Teaching Center• Competencies prepared – writing, presentation skills,

library/research skills, critical analysis of text, read for meaning, divergent thinking

• Not prepared: Ethical inquiry, dialogue, interacting with individuals from different cultures and perspectives

• Reading, on-the-job mistakes, finding a mentor

Part 2:At your tables, discuss:a) How valuable were the competencies (KSA) you were

taught to your career in the “real world”?b) The competencies you didn’t learn – should you have

learned them at the University? If so, where?c) What we know about the forces converging on higher

education in the US – should we think differently about the role of liberal arts?

‘Rethinking Liberal Arts’ Assessment: Scottish Contexts and Ideas’

Dr Vicky GunnDirectorLearning and Teaching Centre

Confusion, ambivalence and definitional ambiguity amongst academic staff

Protection of employer contacts

Student resistance and non-engagement

Inter-professional tensions between academics, Careers & employability service providers, educational developers & students

Unrealistic variety of employers’ pre-work entry needs from universities

Ideology and associated priority mismatchesBehind all of this: fundamental question – what is university education for?

2004-10 Issues of the employability agenda In Scottish Higher Education

2010-11 Revisiting Employability

Shifting emphasis from original approaches to impact of employability futures on how and why we teach:

1. Changing institutional missions & increasing sector differentiation: Rural regeneration Civic engagement & local economies (knowledge & financial) Global involvement

2. Work-related/ -based learning = teaching reformations in ‘non-vocational’ areas

3. Employability initiatives at a distance: Technological solutions (problems?) Placements at an international distance? Domestic placements for international students and the Borders

Agency

Conceptualising- what does assessment actually demonstrate?

Providing opportunities for development and reflection

Discipline

How to: - do the subject

- understand the subject

- interact in the classroom

WRL & Employability

-adapt what is learned & understood outside the

academy

- be & act in different places

- present self

Careers & extra-curricular activities

- find out about jobs;

- present self;

- reflect on aligning strengths with careers

Reflection on opportunities in and outside the curriculum

Research-Teaching Links

• Increasing institutional differentiation in the sector may mean:

• collaborative (rather than competitive) relationships between institutions in a devolved higher education sector become critical to in-country approaches to local knowledge economies and economic regeneration.

• Paradoxically this needs to occur at the same time as certain institutions shift even more in focus away from the national context to global ones.

Employer engagement

Disciplinary development

including student

engagement

National quality

assurance and

enhancement

Local quality assurance

and enhancement

Leverage points in Scottish Universities 2004-12:Brokering possible partnerships

Reputation management Academic standards Campus climate

SustainabilityInitiative fatigueFears - standards and qualityIdeological concernsTechnological capability / infrastructural investment

Students:disengagement or increased yet unmet demand;access to opportunities

Employers:retraction, complexity & diversity

International unrest

Languages acquisition

Anticipating & managing recognised challenges

(Emerged over the last decade)

Changing academic researcher landscape: Using our strengths?

Changes - research production & publication:1. new technologies

2. emerging disciplines

Shift from knowledge transfer to knowledge mobilization

Researcher orientations

Or focus on researcher orientations?

Originality & ethical

curiosity as defined by discipline

Engagement with civil society

Informing policy

Anticipating and

responding to research

funders

Adapted from Hakala & Ylijoki, 2001

Discipline orientation

Problem-solving orientation

Teaching & knowledge transfer

Entrepre-neurial orientation

Researcher •Academic communication methods•Critical thinking in lab, classroom, clinic•Creative, original, innovative thinking (& doing?)•Anticipation of trends (sometimes related to funding)

Profession-al

•Knowledge transfer and impact•Ethical awareness•Fund raiser

Employee•Work place appropriate behaviours•Critical thinking outside of classroom•Adaptability•Budgetary understanding

Drawing on our own experience?

Core curricular activities:

Abstract thinking:

problematizing

Civic engagement

Strategic problem

solving (in authentic settings)

Anticipating / entrepreneurial

Research-teaching linkages focused here currently

What does all this mean for how we assess in the Liberal Arts?

Thoughts? Comments?