Institute:	University of South Australia
Discipline:	Engineering
Title:	Implementation of Graduate Qualities in Engineering Education
Year addressed:	1st & 2nd year
Phase:	Learning Experiences and Assessment
Generic Attributes:	- Innovative and creative thinking - Life-long learning - Effective Problem Solving - Working in Teams

Issues Revealed:

- Both staff and students need to understand the meaning and relevance of the quality in their own particular discipline
- Both staff and students need to learn the know process for developing each quality in individuals
- Motivation is a key factor in a student's success in developing each quality
- Divergent thinking is essential to a student's success also.
- There is a need for engineers to be educated to: operate across all disciplines; be capable of exercising a systems approach to thinking; be capable of problem solving
- To enable students to go on learning throughout their lives the following approaches were recommended: take part in a "comparative or contextualized" framework for study; Progressive development of certain generic skills; allow "some freedom of choice and flexibility" to meet the needs of a range of students; utilise a structure that gives students responsibility and opportunities for self-direction.

Actions Taken:

- The identification of the indicators of attributes and how they could be monitored in the development of each student was carried out
- The project used case studies to explore teaching and learning strategies and methods of assessing student's learning in relations to the development of four graduate qualities.
- Features of the curriculum & learning environment were identified that would encourage the development of the graduate qualities
- The teaching and learning strategies to be used were chosen in order to implement the learning environments recommended to foster the development of the selected graduate qualities.
- Current teaching and learning practices were explored in relation to the curricular specifications identified and recommendations of changes in order to improve correspondence between the actual and the real was noted. This was achieved through discussions with teaching staff of the subject and through a workshop attended by staff and students.
- The graduate qualities were applied to the development of three subjects from the Bachelor of Engineering course: Engineering, Innovation and Practice (second year, second semester); Communication and the Profession (first year, first semester) and also in the Mechanics unit of the subject mechanics and Materials (first year, first semester).
- Assessment: Methods of assessment were identified which provided multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the graduate qualities.
- A table was provided within the report that linked the graduate indicators to Learning Experiences and Assessment tasks.

Lessons Learned/ Reflections

-It was critical that students were well informed of the graduate qualities being developed during the learning process.
-It was important that students were trained in the process of developing creative thinking and lifelong learning.
-Student motivation was critical and should be incorporated into the teaching and learning strategies.