Dr Simon Barrie
Associate Director & Associate Professor,
Institute for Teaching and Learning, The University of Sydney

Simon Barrie is Associate Director of the Institute for Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor at The University of Sydney.  His research explores teaching and learning in universities, in particular the development of graduate attributes.  His work has helped to explain many of the challenges surrounding universities’ previous efforts to foster the development of graduate attributes through curriculum renewal.  He is currently leading a national project in Australia which considers the structural and institutional levers for educational renewal to achieve such learning outcomes.  Dr Barrie is a consultant to several universities, higher education organizations and national projects on the topic of "university graduate learning outcomes and standards" in Europe and Australia.

Keynote Presentation I
Integrating Graduate Attributes into the Academic Curricula

This talk will explore some of the challenges of using "graduate attributes" to effectively drive curriculum renewal for 21st century learners.

Universities around the world are grappling with the challenge of how to educate today’s learners. Not only are today’s learners very different from previous generations of learners, but what they need from a university education in order to thrive in tomorrow’s society is different.  In an era of outcomes-driven education, "graduate attributes" offer a potentially powerful way of approaching the renewal of university teaching and learning experiences.  However, to date, many of our efforts to reshape university education in ways that consistently achieve these "graduate attributes" do not appear to have been successful.

Research into why this might be the case suggests a number of explanations. "Graduate attributes" are themselves much more complex than many first imagined, and require more complex approaches to curriculum renewal than some institutions have so far been prepared to embrace.  In addition, achieving this sort of significant teaching and learning change within our current university structures and cultures is also complex.  Perhaps the heart of the matter is our failure to intellectually engage our colleagues, and especially our learners, in the task of achieving graduate attributes.  Instead, for many teachers and learners, this has become a bureaucratic exercise rather than a meaningful endeavor.