Recognizing a student’s post-secondary journey cannot be captured fully by a list of courses and grades, the University of Lethbridge is creating a supplement to the academic transcript that proposes to represent a student’s complete university experience.
The Student Experience Transcript (SET) will complement the academic transcript and is being designed to reflect a student’s curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular experiential learning opportunities, giving students a well-rounded summary of their university career as they transition to the professional world.
“Experiential education is one of a number of high impact educational practices connected to deep learning and personal development,” says Kathleen Massey, the U of L’s associate vice-president (students). “We provide a remarkably enriching range of these opportunities to students, and the new platform will allow us to gather them in a centralized location for students, increasing visibility and awareness.”
Students will be encouraged to mindfully plan their personal and professional development throughout their time at the U of L. The SET will include a self-reflection tool that will help students develop language to articulate the value and impact of their broad range of experiences while at the University.
“Working with the people who offer the various experiences to our students, we will give them the developmental language to articulate the value of the skills they have gained, preparing them for their future higher education and career paths,” adds Massey.
U of L departments and academic units will play a major role in the creation of each student’s SET and through the use of a central platform, the reporting and curation of student experiences promises to be easier and more consistent across campus. The aggregated information will also help provide enhanced data and metrics linked to the University’s immersive experience brand block, which can be featured during future marketing and recruitment initiatives.
“The project team has been consulting widely to understand how the SET might be helpful to academic and student service teams,” says Massey. “One major benefit is that practicum, workshop, and event registration and prerequisite checking are supported using the new platform. This can help to alleviate a great deal of the manual work that is currently handled by many offices across the University.”
What will it look like? Examples of experiences that might appear on the SET include:
o Cooperative Education
o Applied Studies
o Volunteer experience (such as UVolunteer, who has contributed to the project)
o Study abroad
o Internships
o Practicum placements
o Athletics
o Leadership roles with ULSU, GSA
o Workshop participation
o Research
All experiences will be managed and validated by the University through the platform.
A pilot launch of the platform is scheduled for May 1, with graduate students gaining access to THRIVE programming content and Cooperative Education & Applied Studies students being able to access an initial experience catalogue. By September 1, all students will have access to the system and the experience catalogue, which will be a continually updated living document in ensuing years.
For more information or to learn how you and your department can get involved, contact Trish Jackson, SET Project Manager, trish.jackson@uleth.ca. Also, to follow the development of the SET, check out blogs.ulethbridge.ca/set/