Trialing a graduate outcomes capability framework : an evaluation

During 1988 the then Orange Agricultural College (now Faculty of Rural Management, The University of Sydney) underwent an Undergraduate Review in which nine capabilities were identified as key expectations of graduates of the various management education strands. In order to streamline the process and design ways of assessing the achievements of the capabilities, academics agreed on the following initiatives: embedding the capabilities into each unit of study, development of a portfolio to record student progress in each of the capailities, an evaluation of the portfolio at the end of each year prior to either progression into the next year of study or for graduation, and a staff-student mentoring system. The paper documents the results of the three-year trial and identifies the critical success factors associated with introducing a system to measure attainment of generic attributes.