Innovative curriculum
Deakin courses are built around two guiding elements – graduate learning outcomes and design principles and practices. Together, these enhance our students’ employability via engaging learning and assessment experiences.
Read Deakin's full curriculum framework (refer to Section 6 of the HEC policy)
Graduate learning outcomes
We structure our teaching and learning activities to ensure our graduates develop, and can provide evidence of, a considered set of attributes. Distilled into eight learning outcomes, these are:
Communication
Using oral, written and interpersonal communication to inform, motivate and effect change.
Critical thinking
Evaluating information using critical and analytical thinking and judgment.
Digital literacy
Using technologies to find, use and disseminate information.
Knowledge and capabilities
Appropriate to the level of study related to a discipline or profession.
Global citizenship
Engaging ethically and productively in a professional context with diverse communities and cultures globally.
Self-management
Working and learning independently, and taking responsibility for personal actions.
Problem solving
Creating solutions to authentic, real world and ill-defined problems.
Teamwork
Working and learning with others from different disciplines and backgrounds.
Continuously evolving
In addition to the perpetual review of content and delivery across units and majors, all Deakin courses undergo an annual review to ensure they remain relevant to the needs of students, industry and community. Major course reviews are conducted every six to seven years with input from advisory boards, other relevant areas of the University and an independent review panel.
Design principles and practices
Learning experiences at Deakin are designed to harness digital, physical and human connections. They aim to build learning communities that support students to develop the knowledge, skills and capabilities to be lifelong learners who thrive and make a difference in a rapidly changing world. The design principles are:
Holistic: building on and connecting to students’ existing knowledges and skills, fostering wellbeing, self-determination and the development of capabilities that transform learners into graduates who can achieve their goals.
Feedback-focused: underpinned by feedback designed to support students to achieve and evidence learning outcomes; feedback fosters dialogue that enables students to see their learning progress and make evaluative judgements.
Inclusive: inclusive, accessible and equitable; providing flexibility and choice in mode of study that is balanced with structure to support the development of a learning community.
Authentic: reflective of our digitised lives and world of work; students use ideas, theories and tools relevant to contemporary contexts to solve meaningful problems and make an impact in a rapidly changing world.
Integrated: tailored to the discipline and study mode; digital and physical affordances complement each other and are sequenced across time, space and place to form an integrated whole that prepares students for the contemporary world.
Digital: digital by design; digital technologies are leveraged as core design elements to enable access and participation, and support student success.
Course-wide: designed to be constructively aligned and coherent across a course; a narrative clearly articulates the relationship between activities, assessment and outcomes to support student journeys from transition to graduation.
Active and collaborative: interactive, active and collaborative; students develop skills and knowledge through application activities that support the achievement of learning outcomes.
Relational: promote relationships, connect students to their discipline, others, space and place, strengthen communities and foster belonging.
Assessing learning
We believe assessments should provide inclusive and trustworthy representations of student achievement. Feedback is used to actively improve student learning.
Our students are engaged by, and encouraged to make the most of, these authentic assessment tasks (including simulations). They're asked to exercise their own judgement through self and peer assessment and to thoughtfully curate the evidence created through assessment in portfolios.
Student feedback
Deakin uses the eVALUate survey to collect students' feedback on their learning experiences and to help improve the quality of teaching and courses.
The eVALUate survey focuses strongly on student learning, and prompts students to reflect on their own contributions. It’s designed to be meaningful across all learning experiences – lectures, seminars and practicals, both on campus and online.
Through quantative surveys and qualitative comments, students report on topics such as the design of each unit, their satisfaction with the teaching, what the most helpful aspects of the unit were and suggestions on how the unit could be improved.
Other universities have implemented eVALUate, providing an opportunity for benchmarking of similar units and courses.