What is the Degree Qualifications Profile (DQP)?

2012 Institute on Integrative Learning and the Departments

July 12, 2012

Carol Geary Schneider

How Does the DQP Relate to AAC&U’s Vision for Liberal – and Liberating – Education?

Why is Lumina Field-Testing the DQP?

To Bring New Currency – and New Transparency –

to the Meaning of U.S. Degrees

To Ensure Student Readiness for 21st Century Challenges –

Economic, Civic, and Personal

The Degree Must be More Than a Collection of Courses and

Credits

We Need to Show What Students Can Do With Their

Learning

Why Did AAC&U Join the DQP Effort?

To Close the Gap Between Aspiration and Actual Student

Achievement

Aspiration: Higher Education Has Already Identified the Key Elements in a

Contemporary Framework for Quality:Consensus Aims and Outcomes

High Impact Practices that Foster Achievement AND Completion

Evidence on “What Works” for Underserved Students

Assessment Practices That Raise – and Reveal – the Level of Learning

Making Progress? What We Know About the Achievement of Liberal

Education Outcomes by Ashley Finley (AAC&U, 2012)

The Preponderance of the Evidence – from Many Sources – Shows That

Far Too Many Students are “Underachieving” on All the

Outcomes Educators Endorse

Achievement

From Making Progress?

“…for six of the eleven learning outcomes measured by the

Wabash study, the majority of students showed either ‘no

growth or a decline’ over four years.” – page 8

The DQP Builds from the LEAP Consensus Aims and

Outcomes – And the Desire to “Make Excellence Inclusive”

The DQP Combines Vision with Strategy – A Strategy For:

Moving Students’ Actual Work – and Faculty Judgment about Their Progress – to the Center of Attention

Fostering Practices that Raise Achievement

Creating Assessments Worthy of Our Mission

The DQP is a Framework for Learning That Focuses on Students’ Demonstrated

Achievement

So What is the DQP?

Integration and Application

The Degree Profile emphasizes “the cumulative integration of learning

from many sources and the application of learning in a variety

of settings…” (DP, p. 2)

What Kinds of Integrative Learning Are Included?

Knowledge – Broad and Specialized – With Intellectual Skills

General Learning With Majors

Field-Based Learning with Academic Learning

Civic Inquiry With Academic and Field-Based Learning

Culminating Accomplishments that Integrate Learning Across Levels and Disciplines

The Degree Profile Shifts Our Collective Attention to What

Students Actually Do: Research, Projects, Papers,

Performances, Creative Work… Applied Learning!

Applications

The DQP Asks Us to Shift from My Work – Each Course is a

Silo – to OUR Work – Intentional Practices that Both

Develop and Demonstrate Students’ Competence

The DQP Invites Faculty and Staff to Focus on…

Intentional Assignments that Develop Competence

Integrative Milestone Performances that Provide Evidence of Competence and of Students’ Ability to Tackle Complex Questions and Problems

Aims/Outcomes/Intentional Practices Mapped Across the

Entire Curriculum

First to Final Year

General Education AND the Departments

Co-Curriculum as Well

Why Did We Call it a “Profile?” And What Do We Expect will Happen?

The U.S. higher education “system” is a lot more diverse than is typical elsewhere and, at least to some extent, we value this diversity.

“Profile” defines the shape and basic parameters of the outcomes statements, but not the portrait itself:

Institutions or consortia of institutions or state higher education systems can add new elements and tailor the content of the DQP statements to match their missions.

We tell them they are Kahlo, Dürer, Van Gogh, Stuart: finish the portrait, but you are confined to the same palette of active, concrete verbs!!!

Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)

What Does It Mean to Be the Artist Who Turns the Profile into a Portrait?

That the DQP, as given, is a prod, a prompt, and not the last word.

Don’t agree with the territories? Change them!

Think the competences miss something? Add what you think they miss!

Don’t agree with the verbs? Change them, but make sure they describe what students are expected to do. Clifford Adelman, Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP)

Possible DQP Revisions

Expand the List of Intellectual SkillsEthical ReasoningCollaborative Problem-Solving

Expand and Clarify Three Areas of Applied LearningInquiry-Based ReasoningField-Based LearningCivic Learning

We Welcome Your Feedback and Advice As We Work to Get

the Profile Right!