This year Dr Adrienne Keane and, Dr Dagmar Reinhardt along with Dr Andrew Merchant from Agriculture have received an Educational Innovation Grant for $12,000 to support students in developing graduate attributes.
Though disciplinary knowledge is important, Architecture, Urban Planning and Design are applied professions that are heavily dependent on a broad set of professional skills. These might include interpersonal communication, teamwork, and cultural competence.
Students often ask me what it’s like working in the field and what is required. I always tell them it’s more than just knowing the technical side of the job (Dr Adrienne Keane, Architecture)
These graduate attributes are not just additional to the discipline, but are a core part of the profession. There is a need for students to graduate proficient, not only, in the disciplinary knowledge or specifics of architecture, urban planning or design, but the professional skills and qualities expected for them. Traditionally these skills are developed much later in a student’s curriculum, through work readiness assessment tasks, before heading into the workforce. This project sets out to change that by embedding graduate qualities into first year units of study.
This pilot focuses on first year units of study in the Bachelor of Architecture and Environments in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning (FADP). Creating new learning activities and resources that are informed by the industry and profession, Dr Keane and her team hope to embed teaching and learning of core professional skills into the curriculum.
By bringing graduate qualities to the fore in our teaching and early in a degree, students will be post-university orientated from the get go. This approach to ensure graduate qualities are integrated through curricula could have a much wider application to other professional degrees. (Dr Adrienne Keane, Architecture).
This innovation in learning and teaching will help students to develop the skills and behaviours needed to thrive in the professions they seek to enter.
A multidisciplinary project team
