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Hello
everyone
Apologies
for cross posting
Earlier
this year Birmingham City University (the new name for UCE Birmingham) was
successful with a bid to the Higher Education Academy National Teaching
Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) to run one of the first ever NTFS projects.
This project stems from the philosophy that
educational practices should nurture skills and attitudes that prepare students
for the future. As part of this, one key objective of the project is to explore
issues of employability in the curriculum across disciplines. Teacher, student
and employer perspectives are brought together with the aim to:
1.
develop innovative teaching resources that incorporate
employability-related skills;
2.
offer guidance on work-related skills to students;
3.
elaborate recommendations on sector-wide practices on
how to embed employability in the curriculum;
4.
provide guidelines to employers on how to support new
recruits.
The project is in its very early stages. An initial
review of the literature on employability confirms that employers and new
graduates agree on a skills gap in early stages of professional development.
Commercial / Sector awareness is the most sought by employers and most needed
by new recruits. Commercial / Sector awareness is a skill cluster. It
encompasses awareness of:
•
competitors
•
market leaders / innovations
•
trends or demographics
•
researching beyond corporate websites
Despite a wide-spread belief that this skill is only
relevant to Business students, we believe it is relevant to other disciplines
and we will expand understanding of it in a range of areas such as Law, Housing,
Performing Arts to name a few.
We are currently planning a pilot study. We are aware
that some of you might be already engaged or interested in activities of this
kind. If you would like to share with us your ideas, activities, experience, we
will be delighted to hear from you. Please get in touch with us at [log in to unmask]
If you are interested in following our progress or
want to find out more go to our Moodle site: www.moodle.bcu.ac.uk click on staff
courses and then click on Creating Future-Proof Graduates. We have enabled
guest access but you will need the enrolment key: futureproof
Alternatively click on this link: http://www.moodle.uce.ac.uk/course/enrol.php?id=541
Best wishes
Ruth on behalf of the Creating Future-Proof Graduates
Team
Teaching Fellow for Employability
Centre for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching
0121 331 5126