BEL case studies

What was done

The Learning Designer in the UQ Business School worked closely with the Finance discipline to design the new Master of Finance and Investment Management program (going live in 2024). Given this was a new program, the Learning Designer developed a process of incorporating the new Graduate Attribute policy into this program with the Master of Finance and Investment Management team.

A programmatic approach was adopted to align the program learning objectives with the UQ Graduate Attributes, and the graduate attributes were tweaked in a way that aligned with the context of the program.

The school held several sessions during which the major stakeholders, including program convenors, academics, as well as Learning Designers, got together to discuss the programmatic learning objectives. This was done to ensure constructive alignment with the UQ Graduate Attributes. Each learning objective (LO) was mapped to a corresponding Graduate Attribute during this session. See the example of completed mapping work in the Master of Finance and Investment Management (UQ Login required).

Lessons learnt – advice for others

At the time that the graduate attributes were finalised from UQ, the new Master of Finance and Investment Management program already had established programmatic learning objectives. In the future, it would be preferable to take those graduate attributes into consideration during the development of the PLOs. 

What was done

Drawing on the findings and recommendations in MBA APR reports, a curriculum review process was conducted using backward design (McTighe & Wiggins, 1998). Aligned with this design process was a strategic requirement to implement the new UQ Graduate Attributes policy, resulting in the drafting of a MBA Program Graduate Statement (PGS), contextualised MBA Graduate Attributes (GAs), and overarching MBA Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs). Initial work was conducted by a smaller MBA PLO Working Party consisting of the MBA Director, Deputy Director, three MBA teaching faculty, and one UQBS Learning Designer and a Learning Officer.  
 
The draft MBA Graduate Statement, GAs and PLOs were presented at a workshop with the MBA teaching team, other UQBS academics and Learning Designers, the MBA careers team, and stakeholders from the BEL Faculty. Using principles of backward design, participants were invited to commence the review of individual courses by conducting an initial, high-level mapping of courses against the draft MBA GAs. 

Following the workshop, course teams consisting of two academics per course were formed to conduct course-level reviews. Using the draft MBA PGS and PLOs, course teaching teams worked alongside the Business School Learning Team and the BEL Senior Educational Manager to review and update courses.

Work commenced by identifying the most meaningful and relevant PLOs for each course before updating course learning objectives and assessments using backwards design principles. This enabled the Learning Team to map and track the alignment of relevant PLOs across all courses in the MBA program.

This collaborative, iterative, course-by-course review process led to modifications to the MBA Program Graduate Statement, Graduate Attributes and Program Learning Outcomes to ensure they were fit for purpose.

Lessons learnt – advice for others

The iterative, collaborative development of the PGS, GAs and PLOs through the curriculum review ensured that these statements were clear and fit-for-purpose.

During the review process, the MBA faculty and Learning teams realised that an initial decision to align only one PLO per course would not work as the comparatively limited number of courses in the MBA program would have led to inadequate coverage of some PLOs. Instead, the team adopted the approach of identifying clear and meaningful connections between PLOs and courses. This led to most courses being mapped against two PLOs.