Institutions should be embarrassed by the standard transcripts they have been issuing, unchanged for a century, and students should demand better, argues Fred Cutler. The University of British Columbia has worked to develop for its graduates a supplementary “rich transcript” that includes:
The student’s courses’ full titles; A word cloud built from the instructors’ detailed course descriptions for their courses (not the generic calendar descriptions); Aggregated statistics for each student on the number of writing assignments, pages written, peer reviews, oral presentations, hours of group work, research designs, primary research, internships and service learning; and A list of 23 skills showing in how many of the student’s courses each skill was a key learning outcome.
