Learning & Teaching

Student Skills and Futures is one of three strategic objectives within the Learning & Teaching Strategy 2036, supporting our ambition to help students develop the knowledge, skills and confidence needed for their futures.

Our Embedding Employability Framework and accompanying resources provide an institutional approach to embedding employability within curriculum design and delivery and empowers students to recognise, develop and articulate the employability and skills value of their degree. The Framework and all resources have been co-created with staff and students.  

The benefits of embedding employability include: 

• supporting inclusivity by ensuring that all students (regardless of location, situation or programme) have opportunities to develop their employability and skills
• integrating employability and skills within the degree, rather than presenting it as an additional activity 
• helping students recognise that the skills necessary for thriving in their learning journey are also those that will set them up for successes throughout life
• developing transferable skills which are in high demand from graduate employers and are increasingly important in a rapidly changing world where human-centred skills continue to matter.

The Framework adopts an extracted approach to employability and is organised around five interconnected stages: Identify, Surface, Enhance, Assess and Review. Rather than beginning with the assumption that new activity needs to be added to the curriculum, the starting point is to identify and make explicit the employability and skills value that already exists. This helps ensure that any subsequent enhancements are meaningful, relevant to the discipline and built upon existing strengths.

Through these stages, colleagues are supported to:  

• Recognise and articulate the employability and skills value already embedded within the curriculum
• Help students recognise and understand the wider value of their learning by making employability and transferable skills more visible
• Strengthen existing experiential learning activities, or introduce new ones where appropriate, to help students develop and apply their skills whilst connecting their learning to the world
• Support students to contextualise the value of their learning in future contexts through feedback, reflection and opportunities to articulate their development
• and use student, graduate and sector insights to inform discussions, evaluate enhancements and identify future opportunities for development.

By introducing a more consistent approach to embedding employability, the Framework aims to help students recognise, develop and articulate the value of their learning and apply it confidently in whatever context they want as a graduate. In doing so, it also supports the University’s ambition of moving into the Top 20 UK Universities for Employability (Graduate Prospects, Times & Sunday Times League Table). 

 

Useful Definitions

Employability – The intentional cultivation of knowledge, skills, behaviours, attributes and attitudes that enable students to gain employment and to contribute in the fullest way possible to culture, society and economy locally and globally throughout their lives

Transferable skill(s) - Transferable skills are skills that can be applied across different contexts, including academic study, work and wider life. They complement specialised disciplinary knowledge and are developed through learning and experience, including reflection on that experience. Transferable skills enable individuals to adapt to new situations and will be critical in helping to navigate the evolving demands of future technological and societal change.

Experiential learning - We define experiential learning as an active approach that both allows students to practise or develop a particular skill and connects their learning to the discipline, real-world or future context.

To view more useful Learning & Teaching relevant definitions, visit the L&T Strategy Common Language Library.