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Once upon a time pilot transcript1/7/2024 The trouble is that in most institutions syllabi are extremely varied, with only some providing the richness of information we sought, especially on learning objectives in terms of skill development. Asking faculty to do new things, from the top down, is not something that administrators want to do. And because faculty wouldn’t have to be asked to do anything. That was suggested by the Dean’s Office and Department Heads, presumably because it was thought that syllabi would contain a clear indication of the learning activities and skills to be developed in the class. The natural place to start was to gather syllabi and code them. We began with a small team examining how we might best collect the relevant information about each course. This was a fortuitious place to start the project because all aspects of the data collection (consultation, survey design, respondent recruitment), as well as the data manipulation and presentation, could be done in one place. This unit does both learning technology support and IT services and includes learning designers, developers, and data scientists working with a new data warehouse. Our ongoing Course Characteristics Census and Rich Transcript project is aligned with all of these efforts.Īt the time, Fred Cutler, a Political Scientist specializing in survey research, had just stepped into a role as Academic Director of the Faculty of Arts Instructional Support and IT unit. Other tweaks on the standard transcript have supplemented the abbreviated course titles with some other information or, in the case of electronic transcripts, links to student production or a course website. Unlike the traditional transcript, where most courses are titled in terms of their content, these additions often emphasize skills developed in those activities. A 2017 report from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, Canada reported, for example, that the “Current credential and accreditation system does not serve students well.” Some projects have been launched to get transcripts to represent students’ co- and extra-curricular exeperiences, attaching to the standard transcript some electronically-provisioned add-on that presents students’ activities outside their coursework. Among the many benefits, we imagined that the course data could be aggregated by student to summarize the student’s learning experiences, academic output, and skill development.Īround the world, many people have had the same sorts of thoughts about the impoverished traditional transcript. The idea was to inventory courses to find our how the instructor had designed the learning and what students were being asked to do in the course. So the time seemed right to propose a pilot project: the Course Characteristics Census (C3). From another angle, the Careers and Co-op office was looking for more tools to help students articulate the skills they develop in their BA degrees. It turns out that quite a few people who think progressively about higher education have been saying this for years students need a better record of their learning that will help them articulate their many skills as they move into careers.įortunately for that professor, one of the authors of this piece, it was around this same time that the Faculty of Arts at UBC-Vancouver was taking first steps into defining program learning outcomes and building a datamart including enrollment and course information. Not a great parting gift for students who had worked so hard, developed lots of skills, and spent so much money in their undergraduate career. ![]() ![]() Those transcripts had the official stamp of the institution, some rather indecipherable, over-abbreviated course names, and grades – and nothing more. ![]() Once upon a time a Political Science professor thought about transcripts and wondered if students could be given a better summary of their learning experiences. Rich Transcripts For political Science students at UBC Background
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