An Integrated Delivery and Assessment Process to Address the Graduate Attribute Spectrum

In the past, engineering programmes were developed with separate technical learning outcomes supplemented by generic attributes. The latter were in most cases a standalone set of attributes developed by academic institutions or professional societies overseeing engineering accreditation processes. Although the technical learning outcomes were well assessed and tracked, the generic attributes were at best partially addressed by artificially incorporating them into the curriculum as a way of “ticking-the-boxes”. The current trend is to define competencies that map attributes required across the industry and develop programmes that have imbedded tools to deliver and assess these attributes. The Australian Maritime College is progressively developing new techniques to deliver and assess these attributes through holistic tasks, thus, ensuring a broader coverage of the attribute spectrum within an environment of limited resources and time. This provides students with realistic and challenging tasks, a far cry from the traditional mundane engineering laboratories, thus, promoting interactive and practical problem-based learning, making the study of engineering enjoyable! Concurrently with this development is a practical and simple method of tracking and quantifying the achievement of the attributes by the students, yielding useful data to improve processes within the programme, and hence, the quality of the graduates