The latest Scientia Education Event
The return of conversation: Communication, performance and the future of university assessment
Universities across the world are increasingly confronted by a common challenge: how can they provide convincing evidence that graduates can communicate, reason, collaborate and perform effectively in professional contexts?
For more than two decades, communication skills have been a core component of medical education, where effective professional interactions are recognised as fundamental to quality practice. Focused on these very skills, A/Prof. Taylor’s work led to the development of simulated patient programs, workplace-based assessment approaches, and digital platforms designed to support authentic assessment of communication and professional performance at scale.
When he first presented these ideas to a university-wide audience in 2019, they were largely viewed as solutions to problems unique to medicine. Since then, however, the higher education landscape has changed dramatically. Generative AI, growing expectations around graduate employability, increasing emphasis on authentic and secure assessment, and new requirements for program-level assurance of learning have brought similar questions to the forefront across the sector.
This lecture traces the arc of that work – from its local beginnings within UNSW Medicine & Health to emerging university-wide initiatives in oral assessment, work-integrated learning, communication capability and graduate readiness. Drawing on developments at UNSW and beyond, it explores communication not simply as a graduate attribute, but as a means through which professional expertise becomes visible and effective.
The lecture proposes a framework for thinking about communication capability across a degree program and invite discussion of a broader question: what evidence should universities provide that their graduates can explain, defend, apply and communicate their disciplinary expertise in the complex professional environments they will enter?
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