Designing A Graduate Curriculum: Use Of Credentials To Enhance Student Portfolios

Abstract

Designing a graduate curriculum that meets the needs of the student not planning to pursue an academic career is challenging.  Students want a recognized degree that nonetheless delivers content immediately relevant to their career tasks and credible to their employers. Innovative programs with career content are in high demand, but in the process of innovation standards of scholarship, critical thinking and knowledge must be upheld. This paper describes how teaching and learning concepts and principles were used to combine demands of career and scholarship into an innovative graduate program. The environmental scan leading to this design predicated a design that uses national professional credentials as one method of assessment. The curriculum provides students with portfolios validating their work during and at the end of a Master of Science program.  Instead of a thesis, students create a capstone project combining scholarship with an employer-ready portfolio. Suggestions are made concerning the transfer of the methodology to practically any discipline.