The chances are that most courses will do something
from the listing above but like the stand-alone
module, this might have little impact on the course
culture. If curricula were to adopt a sufficiency of
these strategies then the student experience could
be very different. The course would be about the
enquiring student, building up knowledge in their
chosen subject area but also building self-efficacy.
HE would be offering a more complete student
experience.
Conclusions
Future employability is likely to be one of the main
reasons why a student will enrol for a particular
course (Thomas 2012). The expectation is that
alongside a growing subject knowledge will be the
development of skills that employers will value.
However, the skills that all serious applicants are
expected to have, which might be referred to as
threshold skills, may put an individual in contention
for a post but may well not make a significant
difference. Courses might support employability
development by such activities as workshops on CV
writing or embedded professional development, but
all such activities will need to be individualised by the
student. The CV may be error free but it may not
demonstrate the positive attitude that employers are
looking for. The graduate market is competitive and
the individual student will need to ‘stand out’. So
what makes the difference?
The capability to be effective in the workplace is
about those unique qualities an individual can bring.
The matching to job requirements will involve a
process of looking at the likely demands of the role,
particularly given the drivers of future change, and
articulating the stories that identify the attributes,
characteristics and insights that highlight the
individual. If HE institutions and courses are to
support employability they will need to find ways to
allow a student to express their individuality. Given
that future work skills are likely to be more esoteric,
assessment and delivery strategies will need to
reflect this. If sense-making and social intelligence
are seen as important then students will need to
debate with other students, students will need to
understand the perspective of potential employers,
students will need to nurture and inspire each other.
And the outcome of assessment should be artefacts
that evidence employment capability.
We need to find opportunities for all students to excel
in many different ways. To some extent, this has
always been a challenge and the traditional answer
will lie with those extra-curriculum activities like
involvement with a sports club, part-time work
experience or volunteering. These will add to a CV
but will this be sufficient given the competitive
graduate job market? We are advocating going
further. We would like to see individuals make a
case that they do have the threshold skills, they do
have extra-curriculum activity but also have unique
examples of matching labour market requirements
like being a creative problem solver, being
entrepreneurial, networking, having an artistic eye,
being persistent or being resilient.
What next?
We have undertaken this article as a collaborative
experiment - taking it in turns to write, and
exchanging emails of the latest version, meeting
every three weeks or so to confirm our thoughts and
direction, and then writing again. We have so
enjoyed working together on this and found it so
productive that we have carried on writing. In the
next few months we plan to articulate our thoughts
about how to design assessment for uniqueness. We
want this to be a living discussion and invite you join
us and share your examples, ideas and views.
Contacts us at [email protected]
or
[email protected]. We are on a mission!
References
CBI/NUS (2011) Working towards Your Future: Making the Most of Your Time in Higher Education. At:
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1121431/cbi_nus_employability_report_march_2011.pdf (Accessed: 10 April 2015)
CBI /UUK (2009) Future fit: preparing graduates for the world of work. At:
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1121435/cbi_uuk_future_fit.pdf (Accessed: 10 April 2015)
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