ENHANCING STUDENT EMPLOYABILITY:
Higher Education and Workforce Development
Ninth Quality in Higher Education International Seminar in collaboration with ESECT and The Independent. Birmingham 27th-28th January 2005
Integrating Employability with Personal Development Planning
Mark Atlay, Head of Teaching Quality Enhancement, University of Luton, Park Square, Luton. LU1 3JU (email: )
Abstract
The University of Luton has a long standing commitment to employability and vocational education. In response to the national initiative on Progress Files, it has adopted an integrated approach to Personal Development Planning (PDP) which serves a number of purposes including enhancing student learning and sustaining and supporting the development of ‘employability’ skills. Undergraduates experience a curriculum which integrates career management and transferable skills development with opportunities to enhance their employability. A ‘PDP spine’ through the curriculum provides a specific vehicle for the development and assessment of ‘employability’ skills and characteristics – but all modules may contribute.
This case study describes the approach the University has taken to the development of the skills and wider attributes of its students. It charts progress from an initial consideration of employability as being primarily about transferable skills development, through offering career management skills as an optional element, to making this a core component of the undergraduate curriculum of all students. It locates the University’s approach within the context of national developments in the UK and in particular the current emphasis on Progress Files and personal development planning. Finally it describes the outcomes of an initial evaluation of the effectiveness of the curriculum model in terms of student attainment.
Institutional Context
The University of Luton was established in 1993 from a local College of Technology. From its inception it has been committed to vocational education and providing educational opportunity for all who might benefit. Since 1993 the University’s profile has changed considerably with an initial rapid expansion in student numbers followed by a reduction in home undergraduate recruitment counterbalanced by increased international and postgraduate students. Currently the student population is around 14,000 in three faculties: Creative Arts, Technologies and Science; Health and Social Sciences; and the Luton Business School. The annual in-take of UK students into full-time undergraduate provision is around 1500, the majority of whom are local to the university. The student population is ethnically diverse with a significant proportion (45%) over 21.
From its inception the University has been fully committed to modularity. Programmes are organized within undergraduate and postgraduate schemes which use a common credit and regulatory framework. In the early years students could choose from single and combined (major, joint and minor) awards at undergraduate level in most areas of provision but there has been a recent move away from providing such a wide choice since it has proved difficult to manage the students’ experience effectively – both in terms of student development through the curriculum and student support and communication. In order to ensure consistency, within a modular framework with students studying across subjects, there has been a large element of central specification of curriculum policy with local implementation. This has been true of skills development where there has been an institutional framework within which all programme areas are expected to work since 1994.
Core curriculum elements: Skills and Employability
Responding to the needs of its diverse student body has governed institutional thinking about the nature of the curriculum. Two inter-related issues have been identified as being important to the University and its widening access and vocational mission: skills development and employability.
The basis of the University’s emphasis on skills development can be found in its interaction with its diverse student population. Many of the University’s students have been out of mainstream education for a number of years, few of their peer group will have studied beyond 18 and they are often the first family member to attend higher education. Responding to their needs has required education and development – on all sides. Whilst students are intelligent and able to balance the many competing demands of their everyday lives (including the growing need to work whilst studying), they are often not used to conversing and communicating in a way which academics recognize as being appropriate to study and assessment in a higher education context. The initial reaction is to blame the colleges and the secondary schools who in turn blame the primary schools and the primary schools the parents. The University has attempted to address this issue through an emphasis on skills development throughout the curriculum making it the responsibility of all academic staff with appropriate specialist support where necessary.
Whilst the importance of addressing skills throughout the curriculum has been largely, although not completely, uncontested (Atlay and Harris 2000); the extent to which the University should be responding to the perceived employment needs of the public sector, industry, commerce and the professions has been more controversial. There were those that were comfortable with the notion of a vocational curriculum whilst others favoured a more liberal arts approach. The reality has been that during the past five years students have largely voted with their feet. Courses in areas such as English and History have closed due to declining student numbers whilst vocationally related courses (such as social work, applied media and business studies) have expanded. Financial considerations are important when students are considering whether to enter full-time higher education and vocationally relevant education is seen as providing easier access to employment. Short term debt needs to be off-set by a long-term ambition for the higher earnings that a degree brings. In such a context, where there is heavy marketing of the benefits that higher education brings, there is a moral obligation on the University to ensure that students are prepared for graduate employment – ‘employability’ has thus become a key curriculum driver. Knight and Yorke (2003) define employability as ‘a set of achievements, understandings and personal attributes that make individuals more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations’. Most of these achievements, understandings and personal attributes are not just important for employment – they are essential for academic development within the university and for day to day life beyond.
Employer needs have been identified in a number of reports and although each may use different terminology they emphasize students being prepared to function effectively in the knowledge economy – being able to rapidly fit into the workplace culture, work in teams, exhibit good interpersonal skills, communicate well, and take responsibility for an area of work (Harvey 1997).
The Curriculum Model 1993 - 2000
The University sought to address skills development through a range of actions. Firstly, it required a clear specification of the curriculum and its expectations. The premise here is that learning is supported if students are clear about what they are working towards. From its inception the University based its curriculum model around specifying intended learning outcomes. These more clearly articulate what it is that students should be able to do by the end of the module or programme - a process which has also assisted staff thinking about their curriculum. The process of constructive alignment (Biggs, 2003) then helps to ensure that students’ learning is structured to achieve the intended outcomes and that it is these outcomes which are tested through the assessment process.
Secondly, the University’s experience suggested that perceived skills deficiencies could not be dealt with through isolated skills modules but required concerted action across the curriculum. Thus skills were identified as part of the learning outcomes associated with each module. To do this, in the period up to 2000, the University worked with its own set of ‘transferable skills’ covering the following areas:
o Information retrieval and handling
o Communication and presentation
o Planning and problem solving
o Social development and interaction
Each skill area was broken down further into four or five sub-skills. These were defined at two levels; an initial entry level where the focus was on the skills required for further study and at undergraduate levels 2 and 3 where the emphasis was more on the skills required for employment and life beyond the University (Atlay and Harris, 2000, Fallows and Steven, 2000). Opportunities to further enhance employability were provided through work-based learning modules to which all students had access through optional modules within the curriculum.
During the early phase of development the University progressed through debates about which skills, the relationship between subject specific and transferable skills, whether skills are transferable and whether they should be (or could be) assessed. The University has found explicitly identifying skills extremely useful in making its curriculum explicit to staff, students and visiting assessors. External scrutiny by the UK’s Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) has consistently praised the University’s provision and the value-added nature of the educational experience it provides its students. At the end of this phase the University came to view skills as best described as ‘enabling’: enabling students to access the curriculum, enabling them to engage with the curriculum and enabling the expression of their knowledge, understanding and wider abilities.
The Evolving National Setting
In the UK the recognition that the attributes of a graduate extend beyond the confines of knowledge of their subject has a lengthy history which can be traced back to the 19th century (see Drew, 1998, for a detailed discussion of skills development in the UK). In more recent times, the Dearing report into higher education in the UK (NCIHE, 1997) had amongst its recommendations ‘that institutions of higher education begin immediately to develop, for each programme they offer, a programme specification which identifies potential stopping-off points and gives the intended outcomes of the programme in terms of:
o the knowledge and understanding that a student will be expected to have upon completion;
o key skills: communication, numeracy, the use of information technology and learning how to learn;
o cognitive skills, such as an understanding of methodologies or ability in critical analysis;
o subject specific skills, such as laboratory skills.’
Since the publication of the Dearing report a number of actions have been taken at a national level building on work which was already underway to more explicitly define ‘graduateness’. These include aspects related to skills. The QAA, in conjunction with subject experts drawn from across the sector, has overseen:
o at the qualification level - the development of a Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (FHEQ) to more tightly define the relative outcomes of different awards (QAA, 2001a)
o at the subject level - the development of a series of subject benchmark statements which ‘provide a means for the academic community to describe the nature and characteristics of programmes in a specific subject. They also represent general expectations about the standards for the award of qualifications at a given level and articulate the attributes and capabilities that those possessing such qualifications should be able to demonstrate’ (QAA, 2000 – 2004)
Furthermore, deriving from a recommendation in the Dearing report, national expectations were established for students’ Progress Files which 'should consist of two elements: a transcript recording student achievement … and a means by which students can monitor, build and reflect upon their personal development’.
'Guidelines for HE progress files', were developed on behalf of the sector by the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principles (now, Universities UK and including Universities Scotland), the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP), the QAA and the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN). These suggested that the PDP element of the policy objectives should be operational across the whole HE system and for all HE awards by 2005/06 (QAA, 2001).
The Progress File concept contains:
o the transcript: a record of an individual's learning and achievement, provided by the institution;
o an individual’s personal records of learning and achievements, progress reviews and plans that are used to clarify personal goals and can provide a resource from which material is selected to produce personal statements (e.g. CVs etc) for employers, admissions tutors and others;
o structured and supported processes to develop the capacity of individuals to reflect upon their own learning and achievement, and to plan for their own personal educational and career development – the term Personal Development Planning (PDP) is used to denote this process.
Progress Files aim to help make the outcomes, or results, of learning in higher education more explicit, identify the achievements of learning, and support the concept that learning is a lifetime activity. PDP is seen as ‘a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development’. The Guidelines identify the primary objective for PDP as being ‘to improve the capacity of individuals to understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning, helping students:
o become more effective, independent and confident self-directed learners;
o understand how they are learning and relate their learning to a wider context;
o improve their general skills for study and career management;
o articulate personal goals and evaluate progress towards their achievement;
o and encourage a positive attitude to learning throughout life.’
Evolving the University’s Curriculum model
Issues for consideration
The actions the University of Luton had already taken meant that it was in a good position to respond to the developing national agenda. In 2000 it established a working group to undertake a review of its approach to skills in the curriculum in the light of developments in the sector and the emerging national expectations in relation to Progress files and PDP. The working group identified a range of issues that needed to be addressed:
o The initial curriculum model, whilst valuable in explicitly addressing skills development, was seen as often mechanistic – leading to a tick-box approach if poorly applied.
o The need to be able to recognize students’ learning in a wider range of settings: the university, employment, volunteering, on work experience etc.
o The importance of placing greater emphasis on students responsibility for improving their own learning (this was seen by many as the most important skill for a number of reasons; it was an essential part of being a graduate, it stressed a move from dependence to independence in the curriculum, and it recognised the reality of a university with a limited and diminishing unit of resource trying to respond to the increasingly varied needs of its diverse student body).