The ‘Diamond Nine’: encouraging student engagement with graduate attributes
The ‘Diamond Nine’: encouraging student engagement with graduate attributes
Dr Joy Perkins
What is the idea?
Graduate attributes are designed to make explicit the wide-ranging competencies that students are developing, to prepare them for further study, employment, and life beyond university. However, despite their widespread implementation in UK universities, graduate attributes are often presented as high-level, generic statements, which require student translation at the academic subject level. To support students to understand their meaning and to engage with graduate attributes, the ‘Diamond Nine’ active learning technique can be used. The technique facilitates students to discuss, collaborate, and contextualise their understanding of graduate attributes, to help students start to develop them, during their time at University.
Why this idea?
The ‘Diamond Nine’ technique is an established active learning approach, which involves students ranking and prioritising nine ideas, viewpoints, or pieces of information into what they consider highest to lowest importance (Times Educational Supplement, n.d.). In this case, the ‘Diamond Nine’ technique can help students to start discussing, interpreting, and ordering their own skills and attributes. Engaging students in this type of learning has many benefits, including motivating them to learn while also developing their higher order thinking skills (Vercellotti, 2018).
At the University of Aberdeen, there are 19 Aberdeen Graduate Attributes. Using the ‘Diamond Nine’ technique students can prioritise their top nine attributes into a diamond-shaped hierarchy (see image above). During this small group exercise, students are encouraged to reflect on their academic modules and their co-curricular learning. Discussing how and why they have prioritised and ranked the final ‘Diamond Nine’ is a central feature of this active learning approach. An important part of the exercise is also facilitating students to provide examples of how they have developed these attributes in their curricular and co-curricular learning.
Given the competitive employment landscape, it is crucial that students can demonstrate in-demand skills such as problem-solving, critical-thinking, and self-management to employers to fully enhance their employability. In the current economic climate, simply stating they have a particular competency is not enough (World Economic Forum, 2020). This active learning approach encourages students to engage with graduate attributes, helping students to interpret them in their discipline and supporting students’ articulation of these attributes to future employers or postgraduate recruiters. Interestingly and worthy of highlighting, is that Wong et al. (2021) in their graduate attribute mapping studies, also stress the importance of ‘decoding’ graduate attributes and helping students to understand their transferability in the workplace.
How could others implement this idea?
Limited resources are required