This was a presentation by Vivienne Bozalek and Kathy Watters at HELTASA conference 2012 at Stellenbosch University on 29 November

2. Using authentic learning to
develop graduate attributes
Vivienne Bozalek
vbozalek@uwc.ac.za
Kathy Watters
watterslife@gmail.com

3. Structure of presentation
• Curriculum alignment vs authentic learning for
achieving graduate attributes
• Graduate attributes
• Authentic learning – elements
• Research done at UWC on authentic learning
• An example of an indepth interview –
authentic learnng and graduate attributes

4. Developing graduate attributes
• How best to develop these attributes in higher
education
• One possible way is through constructive
alignment (Biggs, 2012)
• Another possibility is through authentic
learning (Herrington et al., 2010)

5. What are Graduate Attributes?
Graduate attributes are the qualities, skills and
understandings a university community agrees its
students should develop during their time with
the institution and consequently shape the
contribution they are able to make to their
profession and society ... They are qualities that
also prepare graduates as agents of social good in
unknown futures.’ (Bowden et al., 2000)

6. What would UWC Graduate Attributes for the 21st
Century look like?

7. Two tiers of graduate attributes
(Barrie, 2004)
Tier 1
‘complex interwoven aspects of human ability’ (Barrie, 2005:3)
• attributes that allow graduates to prosper in an uncertain world of change
(Barnett, 2004) UWC Charter generic attributes:
• scholarship, citizenship and the social good, lifelong learning
Tier 2
* Clusters of personal skills and abilities (UWC charter)
• Inquiry-focused and knowledgeable
• Critically and relevantly literate
• Autonomous and collaborative
• Ethically, Environmentally and Socially Aware and Active
• Skilled Communicators
• Interpersonal flexibility and confidence to engage across difference

8. UWC Charter of Graduate Attributes
First Tier
SCHOLARSHIP: A critical attitude towards knowledge:
UWC graduates should be able to demonstrate a scholarly attitude to knowledge and
understanding within the context of a rapidly changing environment. UWC graduates
should have the ability to actively engage in the generation of innovative and relevant
knowledge and understanding through inquiry, critique and synthesis. They should be
able to apply their knowledge to solve diverse problems and communicate their
knowledge confidently and effectively.
CRITICAL CITIZENSHIP AND THE SOCIAL GOOD: A relationship and interaction with
local and global communities and the environment:
UWC graduates should be engaged, committed and accountable agents of social good.
They must aspire to contribute to social justice and care, appreciative of the complexity of
historical contexts and societal conditions through their roles as professionals and
members of local and global communities. They should demonstrate leadership and
responsibility with regard to environmental sustainability.
• LIFELONG LEARNING: An attitude or stance towards themselves:
• UWC graduates should be confident Lifelong Learners, committed to and capable of
continuous collaborative and individual learning and critical reflection for the purpose of
furthering their understanding of the world and their place in it.
Graduate Attributes and
2012/12/01
curriculum alignment

9. UWC Charter of Graduate Attributes
SecondTier
1. Inquiry-focused and knowledgeable: UWC graduates will be able to create new
knowledge and understanding through the process of research and inquiry
2. Critically and relevantly literate: UWC graduates will be able to seek, discern, use
and apply information effectively in a range of contexts.
3. Autonomous and collaborative: UWC graduates will be able to work independently and
in collaboration with others, in a way that is informed by openness, curiosity and a desire
to meet new challenges.
4. Ethically, Environmentally and Socially Aware and Active: UWC graduates should be
critical and responsible members of local, national, international and professional
communities. They should also demonstrate a thorough knowledge of ethical, social,
cultural and environmental issues relating to their disciplines and make professional and
leadership decisions in accordance with these principles.
5. Skilled Communicators: UWC graduates should recognise and value communication as
a tool for negotiating and creating new understanding, interacting with diverse others, and
furthering their own learning. They should use effective communication as a tool to
engage with new forms of complexity in social and working life.
6. Interpersonal flexibility and confidence to engage across difference: UWC graduates
should be able to interact with people from a variety of backgrounds and have the
emotional insight and imagination to understand the viewpoints of others. They should be
able to work in a productive team, to lead where necessary and to contribute their skills as
required to solving complex problems.
•
Graduate Attributes and
2012/12/01
curriculum alignment

10. Monitoring Framework
Strategy Action Performance Expected Person
Measure Outcome Responsible
6.1 Develop, refine and Graduate attributes Each Faculty and each Directors of Teaching
6.Embed implement a developed in each discipline within and Learning, DLL;
graduate comprehensive plan Faculty and each Faculties to develop Deputy Deans of
attributes to improve graduate discipline which are their own graduate Teaching and Learning,
employment aligned to the UWC attributes aligned to Teaching and Learning
into outcomes and Charter of Graduate those of the university Specialists
academic critical citizenship Attributes by end of 2011.
programm 6.2 Ensure that courses Number of courses By end of 2012 60% of HoDs; Deputy Deans
have an aligned considered to be aligned courses reviewed are Teaching and Learning;
es and curriculum in terms of graduate aligned to UWC Teaching and Learning
curricula programme with attributes attributes (in Specialists, moderators,
UWC Charter of moderation documents review committees
Graduate Attributes. and departmental
reviews)
6.3 Capacitate UWC Number of Senior By 2011 10% of HoDs, Director Teaching
senior academics to Academics in programmes show and Learning, Deputy
embed graduate Departments and curriculum alignment Deans Teaching and
attributes in their Faculties who have with graduate Learning, Learning
programmes attended Teaching and attributes Specialists
holistically through Learning Retreats to align
curriculum alignment curricula
6.4 Establish institutional Electronic system assists By end 2012 Registrar, expert in
system to assess with alignment of teaching development of system,
extent of activities, assessment Quality assurance
12/1/2012 embeddedness of tasks and graduate manager, Director of
graduate attributes attributes Teaching and Learning

11. For authentic learning to occur one
needs
‘learners to be engaged in an
inventive and realistic task
that provides opportunities
for complex collaborative
activities’.
Herrington et al (2010:1)

12. Herrington’s nine elements of
authentic learning
• Authentic context
• Authentic task
• Expert performance
• Multiple perspectives
• Collaboration
• Reflection
• Articulation
• Coaching and scaffolding
• Assessment

13. Authentic Context

14. Second Life – 3D immersive environment

15. Authentic task
Anti-oppressive scenarios
and role plays deal with:
• human right’s issues
• Building self esteem
• ‘Unlearning’ prejudice
• Developing empathy
• Problem solving
• Developing emotional literacy
and language
• Conflict management
• Supporting ’victims’ e.g abuse,
bullying, xenophobic attacks
• Collectivising issues: Feeling ‘not
alone’

16. Persona Doll Assessment Task
1 As a group, create a persona for one of the dolls which we have acquired in the
department, using the guidelines given to you in the workshop. Write down this
persona in this space. You should also record this and send the podcast to your group
space in the discussion forum as a media file. (20)
2 As a group, identify the issue or topic you are dealing with and the goal for the session
and who your target group will be. Plan the story or introduction you will use. Prepare a
10-15 minute session with the doll. Identify the appropriate open-ended leading
questions in which you encourage the naming of feelings, listening to each other, deep
thinking, expressing ideas, empathising with the doll so that your group can help and
advise it. Write down the issue, goals, target group, the story (introduction) and the
questions you will ask, then record the session with one person acting as the facilitator
and the other group members as the target group and send it as a podcast to your group
discussion forum space. (40)
2 Individual task - Using the prescribed readings for this module, identify the theoretical
approach and principles underlying the persona doll and identify the techniques which
can potentially be used in this approach. Include techniques which can be used more
generally (i.e. not only those which are used for the persona doll).

17. Access to expert Performances and
modelling of processes

18. Guest lectures: Remix
Company

19. Guest lectures: local
artist: Bernie Searle
TELL ME YOUR RACE THEN I WILL
GIVE YOU OUR IDENTITY

20. Performing poetry
Gabeba Baderoon Diana Ferrus

21. Critical Texts
Anthias & Yuval-Davis Lugones Dominelli
2012/12/01

22. The pedagogy of discomfort
2012/12/01

23. Collaborative construction of knowledge

24. Collaborative construction of knowledge

25. Reflection

26. Mediated learning for understanding
Teacher provides skills, strategies and links to be able to complete the task
The student:
world of experience,
ZPD Outcome of deep learning,
This is the teaching space; this is the
Relational conceptual
Unstructured Knowhow knowledge gap! understanding.
&/or
Surface learning
Coaching and scaffolding

27. Authentic task
• Use Powerpoint to prepare a presentation on the relationship between identity,
community and professional practice. The presentation should cover:
• Notions of community, self and identity.
• Remaining questions, tensions and contradictions for the group.
• Implications of the above for professional practice in social work, occupational
therapy and psychology.
• You will be assessed on the basis of your presentation, and the notes used for the
presentation. Critical and creative presentations are encouraged. Your
presentations should contain references to the workshops, postings and readings.
They should show an understanding of the complexity of the notions of identity,
community and the human professions, and should reflect a critical appreciation
of different viewpoints. In your presentation, ensure that you have considered
how raced, gendered and classed histories and differing experiences and values
inform professional identities and practices.
• Your powerpoint presentation should be no longer than ten slides, containing a
maximum of 80 words per slide (to be presented in 15 minutes; 5 minutes for
questions).

28. Indepth interviews at UWC
• Part of NRF project
• Target group: lecturers that are known to be open
to/engaged with technology
• Sent by email to contacts in all public HEIs institution,
snowball sampling
• Content: 3 parts, demographic, tools and open ended
questions around practice with ET
• Respondents: 262 (by 30 September 2011)
• Selection of 35 respondents, for further interviews on how
emerging technology is being used to provide and
authentic learning experience for students
• Sub-set of 12 UWC staff members were interviewed as part
of this research.

29. Lecturers interviewed at UWC

30. Elements engaged with by UWC lecturers

31. Authentic context/ Lifelong learning/
Critically and relevantly literate
• In order to teach physiotherapy, the educator has developed
written cases through which “we try to figure out how to
improve the clinical reasoning process; … clinical reasoning is
really hard and it takes very long time to develop. … We
introduce and encourage the idea of uncertainty and we try
and give the students opportunities to learn how to be
comfortable with the complexity and uncertainty of the
clinical context and then to give them skills to navigate that
uncertainty- rather than just being flawed and overwhelmed
by all the different variables that you have to try and manage
to actually being able to identify them and work with them.
We need to give them skills now for them to able to go into
the real world and say I don’t have this answer, now what do
I know, what do I need to find out, how will I find out.

32. Authentic task/ critically and relevantly
literate/ autonomous & collaborative/
skilled communicators
• in the past we would have lectured on a series of conditions
and say these are the conditions that you need to be aware
of now what we do we give them a case and each case runs
every 3 weeks period and every week we introduce new
information that the students then have to integrate with
what they already know about this particular patient so in
week we say here is a patient and then they to identity
problems and we give a kind of a few questions that help
guide their thinking but we expect them to come up with
their own questions and then we look over the the notes
that they develop and we give input in terms of making
sure that they are following a kind of a guide or a path that
we think is appropriate and then every week we introduce
complexity to the case so we add more information

33. Expert performance/ inquiry focused
critically and relevantly literate
• One of the 1st assignments we did in this module
was we gave them a task where they had some
readings and they had to develop a list of criteria
that they would use to establish credibility in online
sources and so that assignment then kind of set up
how they would go about finding online sources
that they can then use to inform their notes as we
move through the module so we trying rather than
say these are the internet sources you should use
we say this how you can identify useful, relevant
and creditable online sources

34. Multiple perspectives/critically and
relevantly literate autonomous and
collaborative
• You can have clinicians who would disagree on appropriate management
strategies for patients and how do you negotiate kind of a compromise
between what you think its right and what someone else thinks its right so
we do try and model that what we will often do is students will ask me a
question and I will say well this is what I think but let me just grab this other
person who I know has a different view and then we pull facilitators into the
conversation and then we discuss the difference in the view point and model
to the students that often times there is no right answer.
• we also try and encourage the students to look at the particular problems
from a different perspective within the curriculum so from an anatomical
point of view because they are doing anatomy at the same time so how is
this problem relevant in terms of your understanding of anatomy in terms of
your movements science module we showed them a tape video of lady a
neuro-anatomist who had a stroke so we looked at it from a therapist point
of view how can we look at it from the patient point of view so we try and so
that kind of thing where we pull in from other perspectives

35. Coaching and scaffolding
• so in terms of scaffolding like that the students have to have a base
and from that base they can build if the base is shaky we try and
design the case so that its difficult for them to proceed without
having an understanding of what they did in the beginning.
Feedback we try and encourage all the facilitators to give feedback
in the form of a question rather than saying this is wrong, this is
right, this is excellent so even this is excellent is not useful feedback
because students has no way to go from that so we have done a
workshop where we guide facilitators on how to give feedback what
it means we talked to students about how to use feedback and to
try and give each other feedback so in terms of the scaffolding I
think we try and always say why do you say that? What are you
basing that on?

36. Reflection/ critically and relevantly
literate
• we model reflection we go on and on about
how reflection is really important for
profession development, there is just this block
with the students where its just thinking we
talk about if you don’t have any emotional
investment in what you are doing then but the
students are very resistant to reflection

37. Assessment
• at the end of every term the students have to submit a
clinical file which is a collection of documentation that
they have gathered that relates to their patients
contact so there is a clinical evaluation tool where
there are patients kind of documentation notes, there
is the reflections, there is they have set learning
objectives for themselves so every week they have one
or two learning objectives they have the reflections so
there is that they submit at the end of every term that’s
their clinical stuff, they replied to the theory classroom
based stuff they have their case notes which we don’t
assess the case presentations

38. Collaboration
• they are in a different groups ,when they go out in a
clinical practice they are in one group and in the
classroom they are in a different group and the idea is
that students learn things on a clinical experience and
they bring it back to the classroom experience so on
the Monday morning they set aside time where they
discuss the patient they saw the previous Thursday and
we try to get them to bring their own clinical stories
back into the classroom and then the facilitators can
discuss those experiences. we try to build in
collaboration we don’t give them notes they have to
collaboratively build the notes in their groups with
inputs from facilitators

39. Articulation/critical and relevantly
literate/autonomous and collaborative
• at the end of every case each group has to have a set of
case notes where they have drawn up their understanding
of this particular patient and also within that case they
should have had an opportunity to present a summary of
the weeks work so they have their presentation, the
summary of the week they have their case notes and then
every group must do a full case presentation that they
graded on at the end of each case
• we challenge every single statement that the students
makes that is not explicitly guided by a reason so the
students stands up and say I think that then we say why do
you think that/ on what have you based that?

41. Authentic learning using a fish tank

42. Blog on fish tank