UTS aims to develop graduates “equipped for ongoing learning and inquiry in their personal development and professional practice”. Clearly, there are many ways to build these qualities through students’ knowledge and skills. Complementing these, CLARA’s approach focuses on dispositions — how students think about themselves and their learning —  which educational research shows can be a powerful enabler or brake on progress, especially when the learning gets tough (resilience), and when students are expected increasingly to show initiative, creativity and innovation (agency).

CLARA provides rapid, formative feedback, in visual form designed to provoke change, about how a learner sees themself. This is self-report, quantitative data, which for a whole cohort can evidence shifts that can be tested statistically. When evaluating the impact of CLARA, this is triangulated with qualitative evidence from student and educator interviews, plus narrative evidence in the ways that students talk about their learning.

CLARA is hosted on an enterprise grade cloud platform that has been approved by ITD for piloting in UTS. Students receive their Learning Power profile, and academics receive the cohort data.

The project conducting the pilot evaluation is documenting how UTS academics are adopting, embedding and supporting CLARA in their subjects, and the evidence of impact, as well as developing resources to assist new academics to pilot it.

There are many peer reviewed publications documenting the rationale and evidence for the design of CLARA, and its predecessor ELLI. See the resources for more.