Competencies are here to stay. This concept has also become firmly established at the ZHAW School of Management and Law (SML). The objectives of its individual degree programs are geared towards the acquisition of competencies. The aim, in a nutshell, is to focus on outcome: what students are supposed to be able to do as a result of having completed a particular degree program. This has so far only been possible to a limited degree because program objectives at the SML build on the Qualifications Framework for the Swiss Higher Education Area, which has caused them to be rather generic.

A project has been launched by the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning to create competency grids that will record both students’ competency development as well as their actual competencies at the point of graduation. To this end, the Center has been working with heads of degree programs and other stakeholders (employers, among others) to generate a specific structure of objectives that is closely oriented towards the competencies graduates will actually need and to describe these in as much detail as possible.