Working Together to Achieve Graduate Attributes of Our Students

Graduate attributes are the qualities, skills, and knowledge a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution. Universities are paying more attention to the employability of their graduates since the professional bodies are using employability as one of the key measurements in their accreditation criteria. However the question of “are students, universities and industry seeing the same picture in relation to graduate attributes” remains unanswered. Further there is a lack of strategies on how to achieve graduate attributes. To obtain answers for this question and develop strategies, a workshop was organised to bring the leading industry professionals, students and academics in the Master of Construction Project Management Programme together to define and understand the meaning of “graduate attributes” from their perspectives, and to develop strategies that could assist students in better attaining such attributes during their study at the university and beyond. This paper documents the process, outcomes and implications of the workshop.