Embracing Employability in

HEIs 

School of Science and Technology

20 Feb 2013

HEA STEM 

Participating Institutions

• Higher Education Academy • Middlesex University• Aberystwyth University • University of Bedfordshire • Manchester Metropolitan University• University of Tasmania • Teesside University• University of Surrey• Jewish Care

Seminar Agenda

09:00 Registration and Coffee

09:30 Welcome

09:40 Keynote I – Prof. Martin Loomes. Dean of School of Science and Technology (SAT)

10:20 Keynote II – Dr. Mark Ratcliffe. Discipline Lead, Computing at Higher Education Academy

11:00 Coffee Break

11:15 First Talk – Dr. Andy Bardill. Product Design “Engaging employers in curriculum delivery”

11:45 Second Talk - Dr. Neville Hall. Biomedical Sciences “Do stakeholders have a role to play in curriculum development and delivery?”

12:15 Lunch

13:30 Third Talk- Dr. Serengul Smith, Dr. Paula Bernaschina, Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill. “Superhighways into the Curriculum and Employability: A Three-Way Collaboration”

14:15 Breakout discussion on approaches and ideas at different institutions

15:15 Feedback and ideas to take awa

16:00 Close – Coffee and Tea

Serengul Smith– Principal Lecturer– Programme Leader

Paula C. Bernaschina – Academic Writing and

Language – Learner Development Unit

Adam Edwards– Liaison Manager – Library and Student Support

Vanessa Hill – Liaison Librarian – Library and Student Support

“Superhighways into the Curriculum and Employability: A Three-Way Collaboration”

Employers view…

The CBI Higher Education Task Force indicates that employers are least satisfied with new graduates’

– self-management, – communication skills and – business awareness (CBI, 2009)

According to the CBI, ‘62% of entrants to the IT sector require managerial and professional business skills almost immediately’.

CBI higher education taskforce report – Stronger together: Business and universitiesin turbulent times, 2009, http://highereducation.cbi.org.uk/uploaded/CBI_HE_taskforcereport.pdf

CBI - Confederation of British Industry

Our Challenge

There is a clear indication that science and engineering students, in general, lack employability skills (King 2002) and they have the misconception that these skills are not necessary in industry.

Students often arrive at university– with a limited perception of a career they wish to pursue– lacking a clear view of the IT sector’s needs

How can we make sure that our programmes include specific skill sets required by industry and cope with the changing needs of the job market?

To tackle this problem

In the School of Science and Technology (SAT), we have formed an intra-university team and our collaborative work has aimed at:

• Integrating the specialist input, appropriate for the science and engineering students’ needs, offered by central units directly into the curriculum;

• Ensuring that staff are aware of the relevance of the sessions to their modules and, by tying sessions into module related case studies and projects bring together the expertise and experience of subject specialist staff and skills and support specialists.

There is no one approach for embedding employability across a curriculum. There are various methods, which may be adopted (York and Knight 2006):

• Employability through a whole curriculum• Employability through a core curriculum• Employability related modules within a curriculum• Work-based or work related learning within a curriculum• Work-based or work related learning incorporated as one or more components

in a curriculum

Our approach to embedding employability within the existing programmes in the School of SAT has utilised two of the above methods.

The CBI Employability Competencies

The CBI defines employability as “A set of attributes, skills and knowledge that all labour market participants should possess to ensure they have the capability of being effective in the workplace – to the benefit of themselves, their employer and the wider economy”

10/04/2023Slide 9

Step 1

10/04/2023

• CBI* employability guidelines were mapped onto LDU and LR academic and professional development activities

CBI* employability guidelines

Mapping carried out by LR

Mapping carried out by LDU

Step 2

10/04/2023Slide 11

EIS Programmes

Split into

clustersModules selected

7 Programme Clusters formed

8 Modules identified

BIS1200

BIS1211

CMT1300 CCM1418

CMT1314

CCM1416

CCM1412 hrm1110

Then, employability related modules were identified within the whole curriculum by clustering the existing SAT programmes based on the shared 1st year modules

Step 3

10/04/2023Slide 12

In the final stage, the selected modules’ leaders identified relevant and appropriate lab, seminar activities and assessed work for embedding to be implemented.

Subsequently, the module leaders scheduled these sessions within the normal module timetable. This means that all students take these sessions as part of their study, and these are also tied into their module content, assessment and practical work.

Academic Writing and Language

10/04/2023Slide 13

AWL work is informed by an eclectic range of theoretical and practical positionsAcademic literacies(e.g. Lea & Street, 1998; Lillis, 2003)

Discourse Analysis(e.g. Fairclough, 1992)

Linguistic ethnography(e.g. Rampton, et al. 2004)

Writing development (e.g. Elbow, 1998; Deane & O’Neill, 2011)

Argument studies(e.g. Mitchell & Andrews, 2000)

English for Academic Purposes(e.g. Jordan, 1997; Alexander, et al. 2008)

Situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991)

Corpus Linguistics(e.g. Sinclair, 1991; Biber, et al 1998)

Genre Analysis(e.g. Swales, 2004)

Functional systemic linguistics(Halliday, 1995)

Academic Writing and Language

Mission

...to empower students to make the effective

language choices they need for the creation

of knowledge and the achievement of

discipline-specific tasks at university.

10/04/2023Slide 14

• Focus has grown from academic literacy to also include 'workplace literacy'

• Not separate entities but rather a development from one to the other

• The link between academic work and future professional work

10/04/2023Slide 15

Delivery

We have found that embedded support is a more efficient and effective way to assist students as those who usually need help tend to be the ones who are least likely to seek assistance.

10/04/2023Slide 16

Creating awareness

• At this stage in our initiative emphasis has been placed on:

– Free writing (Elbow, 1998) – Reflective writing (Moon, 2000) – Teamwork (Tuckman ; Belbin )

10/04/2023Slide 17

Free writing

Agonising over the structure of the sentence and their choice of words instead of allowing their ideas to flow and getting caught up in the creative process hinders the writing process (Elbow, 1998).

10/04/2023Slide 18

Free writing

• Students were introduced to this strategy and given the opportunity to practice it.

• In a survey presented at the end of one of the modules, 48% responded to the statement 'I did free-writing to warm up before writing the coursework’.

10/04/2023Slide 19

Reflective writing

Reflective thinking and writing have been associated with the 'deep learning' (Biggs, cited King, 2002) in various learning taxonomies (Moon, 2000) and have been seen as important in UK universities over the last decade.

10/04/2023Slide 20

Reflective writing

• Helps students to develop and refine the connections between their prior knowledge and newly gained knowledge

• Assists them to make critical connections between theory and practice.

10/04/2023Slide 21

Reflective writing

• The concept of metacognition is discussed and students are introduced to Kolb's experiential learning theory (Kolb and Kolb, 2005).

• Much of the coursework contains the need for reflection.

• Students sometimes confuse being reflective with being descriptive.

10/04/2023Slide 22

Teamwork

“A team is not a bunch of people...but a congregation of individuals, each of whom has a role which is understood by other members. Members of a team seek out certain roles and they perform most effectively in the ones that are most natural to them.”

Dr. R. M. Belbin

10/04/2023Slide 23

Teamwork

Students take part in a team building exercise

•Tuckman's model of team development•Belbin’s team role theory•Communication issues

10/04/2023Slide 24

Impact on provision

2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012Embedded Sessions 25 hours 143.5 hours 133 hours

Voluntary workshops 40 hours 48 hours 114 hours

Tutorials 78.5 hours 129 hours 233 hours

10/04/2023Slide 25

Adam Edwards and Vanessa Hill

Library perspective

• Issues

• Ideas

•Solutions

•Plans

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajourneyroundmyskull/4788590225/

Issues

• Not embedded

• Inconsistent provision

• Repetitive

• Bad timing

• Lack of information skills

• Teaching methods…….

Librarians as teachers

Teaching skills• Too generic• Tools based• Didactic• Uninspiring• Too much• Unfamiliar subject

Student research

•Answers

•Facts

•References

•Reporting back

•Easy option

•Fear

Librarians reinforce this!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nottsexminer/6270679714/

Get the ball rolling

Move from

“ …lifting and transporting textual substance from one location, the library, to another, their teacher’s briefcases.”

To

“…searching, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, selecting, rejecting…”

Kleine 1987

Inspiration• Less is more

• Cloning

• Discussion

• Learning by doing

• Learners, not the taught

• Gameshttp://advedupsyfall09.wikispaces.com/Sara+Woodard

Deep Learning

Collaboration and coordination

• School plan

• Structure

• Menu

• Mapping

Self-management

Problem solving

Communication and literacy

Business and customer

awarenessTeam working

Application of numeracy

Application of IT

CBI Employability Guidelines

Initial mapping of Library workshops

Problem solving

Application of IT

Communication and literacy

• What is Learning Resources?

• Thinking about resources• Understanding reading lists• Evaluation

• Searching resources

• Plagiarism• Search strategy

Where we are now

Problem solving

Application of IT

Communication and literacy

Team working

Self-management

Application of numeracy

• Thinking about resources• Evaluation

• Searching resources

• Search strategy

• Group work

• Managing search and results

• Understanding Dewey

Measurable impact? • CCM2426 students survey

• 70 attendees, 39 non-attendees

• Most common mark 60%

• Most common mark bibliography 5/10

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uiowa/8037646993/sizes/c/in/photostream/

Measurable impact Marks Attendees Non-attendees

Mark 55% or less 36% 56%

Mark 60% or more 64% 44%

Bibliography 5 or less 41% 54%

Bibliography 6 or more 59% 46%

What they used and why

Search tools used Attendees Non-attendees

Google 70% 85%

Wikipedia 19% 36%

Summon 60% 67%

Library catalogue 46% 30%

Evaluation criteria Attendees Non-attendees

Current 76% 75%

Relevant 74% 75%

Academic authority 64% 56%

What next?

• Roll-out framework

• Develop activities

• Improve attendance

• Revalidation

The New IT Programme Development

Moving on from embedding the CBI Employability Skills Set into our existing programmes, The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) has been explored and subsequently embedded into the new IT Programme.

SFIAPlus is managed by a consortium comprising BCS, IET, IMIS, itSMF and e-skills UK. www.SFIA.org.uk.

Why SFIA?

• SFIA is a model for describing and promoting high-level IT skills standards.

• The SFIA Skills are consistent with the long-term professional needs of IT graduates.

• SFIA is also a bridging tool, between HE and the industry, which aims to enable students to have a better understanding of the employers’ needs.

SFIA is managed by a consortium comprising BCS, IET, IMIS, itSMF and e-skills UK. www.SFIA.org.uk.

In the initial stage of the IT programme development process, three categories of the QAA’s National Subject Benchmarks (QAA, 2007, p.12) on Computing have been utilised to form the basis of the IT programme outcomes.

These are :

• subject-related cognitive abilities, • subject-related practical abilities and • additional transferable skills

10/04/2023Slide 43

Foundation of the proposed IT programme

SFIA Based Role Descriptions

Kevin Streater Executive Director, Employer EngagementIT & Telecoms The Open University

Why SFIA?

Therefore, the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA, 2011) has been adopted in the context of Information Technology to represent a range of industry defined IT and employability skills within the proposed programme.

SFIA is managed by a consortium comprising BCS, IET, IMIS, itSMF and e-skills UK. www.SFIA.org.uk.

BCS and SFIAplus

British Computer Society (BCS) supports degree programmes that are influenced by research, industry and market requirements and actively promotes the professional skills described by SFIA through their accreditation.

SFIAplus is a three dimensional matrix covering the whole of IT, divided into 6 categories,19 sub-categories and 96 skills.

10/04/2023Slide 47

Mapping onto SFIA

• The learning outcomes of the new IT degree programme have been mapped onto SFIA as shown below.

Mapping onto individual Modules

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturalturn/3264726560/

Breakout discussion on approaches and ideas at different institutions

Group 1•How students can maximise their potential through volunteering?• led by Sonia, Judy and Ed

Group 2•Core skills (writing, communication and information)•led by Adam, Vanessa and Paula

Group 3•Work Placements and Employer Engagement•led by Bryan and Carl