developing employability

Curriculum coherence

In order to embed employability the curriculum must be coherent across the whole programme, and it might be initially useful to focus on core modules. This requires a clear framework of programme leadership and collaboration. Programme Directors and other staff involved in leading and managing curriculum change need to lead their teams to design and deliver programmes which achieve constructive alignment across all modules on a programme.

Progression

Ideally employability skills will develop year on year in line with the difficulty spike of module content. The QAA's Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications of UK Degree-Awarding Bodies characterise progression by prioritising skills along a spectrum of increasing complexity. Work needs to be undertaken (the definition phase of the 4 step process) to identify the Employability skills that graduates should be developing on any programme. Once this has been achieved they need to be integrated in to the curriculum, and scaffolded across all parts. This staged development will progressively build students' capability with all desired attributes

Visibility

Employability may become so deeply embedded that it is no longer visible to the students, and so needs to be drawn out of the 'hidden' curriculum by:

• Making employability explicit in learning outcomes;
• Choosing pedagogies that elicit skills through embedded learning
• Presenting employability as an integral and legitimate part of the curriculum; and
• Providing students with opportunities to reflect on and articulate what they have learnt.

The aim is to enable students to make meaningful connections between the knowledge and the skills from different modules, integrate these into a coherent whole, and apply these to the real world.