What is the International Big Picture Learning Credential?
The International Big Picture Learning Credential is a new, personalised form of assessment. It evaluates and recognises the capacities, experiences and qualities of secondary school graduates from diverse cultures and backgrounds more comprehensively than exam-based certification systems.
The impetus is to put the ‘person’ back into educational assessment so that young people exiting schooling do so with a rich, customised portrait of their abilities that offers meaningful, accessible information to end-users in the wider community, while allowing students significant agency in the way they are represented.
As no two Big Picture students have the same interest-based learning pathway, a personalised approach to final-year assessment is required to provide a fair and balanced assessment that adequately portrays a student’s distinctive learning, achievement, competencies and potential.
Unlike other forms of assessment, no attempt is made to rank or scale students against each other. Their achievements are judged on demonstrations and observations of performance throughout their schooling against six specially constructed assessment frames in the areas of: Knowing how to learn, Empirical reasoning, Quantitative reasoning, Social reasoning, Communication and Personal qualities (for further details on these frames click the petals on the diagram above.)
Student final year results are presented in a Learner Profile that is a showcase of a graduate’s attainments, backed up by evidence of their work that students curate in a interactive online portfolio. The Learner Profile is personalised and designed to reflect the richness of students’ real-world experiences, personal qualities and academic results.
The IBPLC pathway to university
The International Big Picture Learning Credential (IBPLC) offers a rigorous non-ATAR pathway from secondary to tertiary study that is currently accepted by 17 universities around Australia, including the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
The credential was developed in collaboration with Melbourne Metrics at the University of Melbourne and is warranted by same. It is hosted on the Universities Admissions Centre platform Credfolio.
Which Australian universities currently accept the IBPLC?
Current university partners who offer places to BPLA graduates on the basis of the IBPLC include:
Australian National University
Avondale University
Charles Sturt University
Flinders University
La Trobe University
Murdoch University
RMIT University
Southern Cross University
Swinburne University
University of Canberra
University of New England
University of Newcastle
University of Tasmania
University of Technology Sydney
University of Wollongong
Victoria University
Western Sydney University
The University of Sydney and The University of New South Wales are currently in negotiations to become partner universities with BPLA.
The Australian College of Physical Education is also a partner.
What are the most popular courses that Big Picture graduates are studying?
- Biomedical Science/Medicine
- Business/Law
- Communications/Journalism
- Education (Early Childhood & Primary)
- Environmental Science
- Information Technology
- Nursing
- Physiotherapy/Exercise Science
- Visual Communication/Design
- Science (Animal Behaviour, Biology)
Meet some recent graduates:
The video below features Big Picture graduates talking about their transitions to university, and how they believe that the Big Picture Design for Learning has assisted them to succeed.
