Towards an ontology-based approach to knowledge management of graduate attributes in higher education

Abstract

Knowledge around graduate attributes (GAs) is an area in need of knowledge management strategies. GAs are the qualities and skills that a university agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution. The importance of GAs and ensuring they are embedded and assessed is widely accepted across higher education. This research paper uses Grounded Theory and Network Maps to gain insights into the issues of similarities and differences in the discourse around our sample universities. To cover these two perspectives, we had two researchers involved in data analysis, one with the goal of distilling key ideas and identifying similarities and the other with the goal of untangling and drawing out differences. There is no unified taxonomy of managing GAs. The motivation to create such ontology is to push the standardization process that will enable the connection among academic systems and improve educational workflows, communication, and collaboration between universities.