Graduate Profiles and Curriculum Mapping
At a recent seminar series on learning and teaching there were a couple of presentations on Graduate Profiles and on Curriculum Mapping.
A Graduate Profile describes what the output of the University should look like in terms of the attributes its graduates should display. Curriculum Mapping is a process of matching what goes on inside of courses to the aforementioned graduate attributes in the Graduate Profile.
In other words, its a process of showing how processes inside the University connect to its outputs.
It all sounds very good.
And yet …
… and yet I can find no evidence (empirical or otherwise)-to suggest that either Graduate Profiles or Curriculum Mapping have any impact on education outcomes. Do they-result in, say, either greater effectiveness or efficiency somewhere?
I do not know.
So, I am left wondering if they are 'just' legitimacy exercises? Do we do them because everyone else does them?