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Communication

Communication skills development across the curriculum

ECU aims to produce graduates with strong employability skills, which are required not only to gain employment, but also to progress in university studies. These communication skills, in an academic and professional context, include: written, oral, literacy and numeracy skills, and reflect the combination of literacies used by a student to communicate in day-to-day situations, academic contexts and in the workplace.

As stated in the Curriculum Design Policy and Procedure, all courses will systematically develop and assess these skills to meet the pre-determined exit standards relevant to the discipline studied. In support of this, all commencing students undertake an online screening tool which is facilitated with the Academic Integrity Module through Canvas. In addition, Course Coordinators will designate summative assessment tasks throughout the course which act as milestone requirements for assurance of the development communication skills. These tasks are benchmarked and moderated as per regular Course Evaluation and Review procedures.

Academic Teaching Staff will be supported by the Centre for Learning and Teaching to systematically and explicitly teach and assess communication skills across the course.

Useful links

Generic Communication Skills rubric

The aim of the generic oral and written communication skills rubrics is to ensure the assessment of communication skills in every relevant task, in every course, via a standardised rubric. Generic terms are used in the rubrics to facilitate ease of use by academic staff without specialist literacy knowledge, and to allow contextualisation. Academic staff, as discipline content experts, are expected to determine what “appropriate to discipline/ assessment type” means.

Threshold Standards of Communication Skills

The Communication Skills Threshold Standards are underpinned by key principles in the Edith Cowan University Curriculum Design and Curriculum Design Policy and Procedures.

Discipline Threshold Learning Outcomes are defined in this policy as the “minimum discipline knowledge, discipline-specific skills and professional capabilities including attitudes and professional values that are expected of a graduate from a specified level of program in a specified discipline area.” This policy also stipulates that Curriculum Design will “contextualise and embed generic skills, including communication.” Communication Skills include “written, oral, literacy and numeracy skills. In an academic and professional context these are reflected in a combination of literacies used by a student to communicate in day to day situations, academic contexts and in the workplace.”

The purpose of the Communication Skills Threshold Standards is to provide a framework for academic staff to help identify the minimum communication skills required at each level of a course: Introduced, Consolidated and Demonstrated.

Threshold Standards

CL03 Exemplars

Developing and assessing communication skills framework

The Distributed Expertise model (Arkoudis & Harris, 2018), which has informed ECU’s Curriculum Design Policy and Procedure, suggests that the development and assessment of students’ communication skills requires an integrated approach and that this should distributed according to the professional responsibilities of key people involved in teaching and learning. These various approaches contribute to ensuring students have attained threshold levels of English language communication upon graduation.

Graduate Certificate of Academic Practice (GCAP) Developing Communication Skills Module

This module provides a foundational digest of essential information for developing communication skills, along with scaffolded tasks to prompt you to document and reflect upon your development and experience of developing or embedding communications skills in the context of your discipline. It also introduces you to well-established frameworks and current policies and procedures that frame embedding communication skills in an institutional and national context. https://intranet.ecu.edu.au/learning/academic-development/graduate-certificate-in-academic-practice

School Senior Learning Adviser contact details

The role of Senior Learning Advisers (SLA) is to work directly with academic staff to embed communication skills into the curriculum. SLAs can assist with the development of assessments, creation of resources, and delivery of activities that promote student academic literacies and communication skills.

SLA contact details: https://intranet.ecu.edu.au/learning/centre-for-learning-and-teaching/learning-support/learning-support-staff

Scholarly articles for Academic Staff

Case studies and papers detailing how communication skills have been integrated into curriculum are presented here.  Articles on Communication skills development (PDF, 487KB)

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