Summary of changes
A new graduate attributes component of CIS and Subject Outlines was released on Wednesday, 12 December 2012.
The new release is the first in a series of upgrades to CIS required to provide support for capturing and reporting upon information about graduate attributes and course intended learning outcomes.
All staff with CIS administrator roles have access to this new functionality, but it will have very little impact on routine use of CIS and Subject Outlines.
Subject coordinators will notice some changes in the display of information in Subject Outlines. The only changes that will directly affect subject coordinators is the way in which assessment task due dates are specified and the validation of the assessment task weight data in the workflow change request submission process.
Future
Future releases of CIS will build workflow around the new graduate attribute functionality, provide reports showing the relationship between the assessment regime of a course and the intended learning outcomes, and provide clearer information for students about the links between assessment tasks and intended learning outcomes.
A long-term objective is to allow assessment task criteria stored in CIS to be downloaded to Review to facilitate assignment marking and to provide more comprehensive feedback to students.
Changes to Subject Outlines
Due date
Up until now the 'Due date' field in Subject Outlines has been free text. In the new release, subject coordinators first choose a format from a drop-down list and then input data appropriate to that format.
The reason for making this change is that it is hoped in a future release to automatically insert assessment task due dates into the program table.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Assessment Tasks tab
The order of items on the Assessment Tasks tab drop-down has changed and a new item, 'Outcome statistics' has been added.
The 'Outcome statistics' link will ultimately be used for accessing graphics and reports that show how the various assessment tasks contribute to the realisation of the learning outcomes. The functionality is not yet fully developed and tested so it should not be used until it is formally made available in a future release.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Manage tasks
In Subject Outlines/Assessment Tasks/Manage tasks there is now a summary table covering all tasks. This table can be edited and saved. New fields, 'Type' and 'Groupwork', have been added. The other assessment task fields can be accessed via the [Edit] button.
Validation is now also applied after the [Save] button is clicked to ensure the task weights are numbers in the range 0–100 and that they add up to 100. Invalid data (for example '20%' instead of 20) that was input in earlier releases of CIS when there was no validation is displayed in red. It must be corrected before the data can be saved.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Assessment criteria
If graduate attribute functionality is not yet being used, information to be displayed to students about assessment criteria should be inserted in the existing 'Assessment criteria' field that is associated with each assessment task.
A new 'Criteria linkages' table has been added to each assessment task. This table should be left blank until the time comes when the graduate attributes functionality is to be used.
The table captures assessment criteria for the task, with each stored in a separate row. Each criteria can then be linked to one of the subject learning objectives and/or one of the course intended learning outcomes. Relative weights can then be assigned to the criteria, if required. Two other optional fields are a 'maturity' level of the contribution and a professional accreditation agency competency reference.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Workflow validation
The only impact at present on workflow is that any proposed changes to assessment weightings are now validated before a change request is submitted. A warning is given if the assessment weightings as proposed are not in the right format or do not total 100%.
At this stage it is not possible to use the workflow system to request changes to the criteria linkages, subject learning objectives, or the parent course/study package.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Changes to CIS
A new Graduate Attributes tab has been added to CIS Course Areas, Courses, Subjects, and Majors to enable the formal capturing of graduate attributes in CIS.
The following is a brief summary of the new functionality.
Complete details about the new graduate attributes functionality are available in the documentation.
Course area graduate attributes (CAGAs)
The course area graduate attributes, if used, are input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Course Areas.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Course graduate attributes (CGAs)
Course graduate attributes are input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Courses using the 'Edit', 'Inherit' or 'Copy' options on the drop-down list.
At present there is no ongoing synchronisation of CGAs with CAGAs, so any changes to a CAGA will not automatically flow through to the CGA if it has already been populated. Faculties need to keep their own records of which courses need to have matching CAGAs and CGAs.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)
Courses
The course intended learning outcomes for a course are input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Courses using the 'Intended learning outcomes' option on the drop-down list. Each CILO is normally linked to a course graduate attribute.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Majors
In some faculties a single course has multiple majors covering different sub-disciplines. When this is the case the intended learning outcomes of the course may depend on which major is undertaken. As such, you can specify CILOs for a major by defining the parent course and then linking the major's CILOs to the parent course's graduate attributes (CGAs). Only one parent course can be specified.
The parent course for a major is input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Majors using the 'Parent course' option on the drop-down list.
The course intended learning outcomes for a major are input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Majors using the 'Course intended learning outcomes' option on the drop-down list.
Full details are provided in the documentation.
Subject learning objectives (SLOs)
To enable the linking of Subject Learning Objectives (SLOs) with Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), a parent study package needs to be specified and the SLOs need to be entered.
The parent study package is input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Subjects using the 'Parent study package' option on the drop-down list.
The subject learning objectives are input via the new Graduate Attributes tab in CIS Subjects using the 'Learning objectives' option on the drop-down list.
Currently subject learning objectives are stored for each subject in free-text form in the 'Learning outcomes/objectives' field in CIS Subjects.
Until all SLOs are set up in CIS (using the new GA functionality), the 'Learning outcomes/objectives' free-text field in CIS will continue to be used in all outputs and consequently needs to be kept up to date. The new SLOs will be used for linking assessment tasks to SLOs.
However, in future CIS releases, the Subject Outline PDF will preferentially use the SLOs set up with the new GA functionality when they exist instead of data in the free-text field. Users will be advised when this is the situation.
Once all SLOs are set up in CIS using the new GA functionality, the 'Learning outcomes/objectives' field in CIS will be retired.
Full details are provided in the documentation.