Map graduate attributes

Graduate attributes, clinical competencies, terms like this can be nominated by the review authors in order to match the language best understood by the accrediting or reviewing body.  In this documentation, we refer to them all as graduate attributes, and they’re a collection of broad characteristics which we hope to see in our students when they graduate.  In professional degrees these could be specified by the accrediting body, or in others they are decided when planning the programme of study.  While not every paper will contribute to the development of every one of the attributes, over the course of the whole programme it’s important that they all be covered and reinforced.

In Compass, we ask teaching staff to rate their papers against the attributes of the programme in which they’re contained, on a scale from None to Lots.  This score is used during programme development as well as here, in reviews, in order to show how each is developed during the course of the programme.

The extent to which each paper contributes to a particular graduate attribute can be shown using a colour coding scheme. The deeper the colour, the greater the influence or contribution. The values shown indicate the opinion of the course director – more detailed information about how each is measured through the learning objectives and assessments of each course can be seen by visiting a paper’s homepage by clicking on the table.

Mapping a programme

  1. From the review homepage, navigate to the tab named Map graduate attributes (or similar).  Please note that the exact term you see may not be graduate attribute, but something in the terminology specific to your field.
  2. Click the Select semesters button (a) to open the dialog box selecting which semester(s) you’d like to show in the table.  Where census period is longer than a year, this selection can help to declutter the map.  Click Update semester selection (b) to return to the main interface.

  1. Once you’ve selected your semesters, new buttons will appear on the left hand side, and all the papers will appear greyed out. Click the Select graduate attribute (or whatever) drop-down (c) and select the one by which you want to colour the map.  The name of the one you select will appear underneath the drop-down so you’ll always know what you’re seeing.  The scale for the colours is shown in the legend (d).  NB: if a paper remains grey after an attribute is selected it means that the paper does not contribute to development of the selected attribute.

  1. For any paper, you can click on its box to see more detailed information about how the selected graduate attribute is developed and contributed to in the paper.  This includes a list of the intended learning outcomes (e) and their related assessments (f).  Scroll to the bottom of the pop-up box to find a link to the paper’s homepage (g).   Please see information about navigating the paper homepage here.