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USC graduate attributes: walking our talk
Conference presentation

USC graduate attributes: walking our talk

Gayle J Mayes
Vice-Chancellor's Learning and Teaching Colloquium, 2007 (Sunshine Coast, Australia, 30-May-2007)
University of the Sunshine Coast
2007
url
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Abstract

Tourism Health Promotion collegial learning strategy
The Practicum in Tourism TSM323 is a 12 credit point course, undertaken predominantly by third year Tourism Major students. The course was introduced in 2000 in response to student feedback and requests for opportunities where they could gain valuable and essential work-related personal and professional skills, knowledge, and competencies. The course was designed to enhance students' work readiness and confidence, and prepare them for workplace participation and competition. A Graduate Attributes questionnaire was designed and administered to the students who completed the Tourism Practicum in semester 2 of 2006, in order to gain an understanding of the students' perception as to which Graduate Attributes were addressed by the Tourism Practicum, and to what extent each of those attributes were achieved. Each major Graduate Attribute was presented as a set of between two and ten sub-scales or sub-attributes that contributed to the major attribute. The questionnaire was sent through the post after the completion of the course and grades and achieved a 50 percent (N=11) response rate. The scores from 1 to 5 on Likert scales for all items were added and averaged to give a single score out of 5 for each major attribute. Results were: 1. to understand: 3.95; 2. to think: 3.95; 3. to learn: 4.00; 4. to interact: 4.12; and 5. to communicate: 3.95. The Tourism Practicum achieved an overall score of 4 (3.99) out of 5 for each major Graduate Attribute. However, when students were asked to score 13 other general personal and professional attributes, Leadership achieved the lowest score of 3 out 5. This comparatively low result will be addressed by the introduction of an innovative Leadership component in the 2007 Tourism Practicum course. This Teaching and Learning innovation will be the focus of an Internal Seed Grant for 2007.

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