Embedding Employability Framework

Identify

Employers and students increasingly value the ability to articulate skills as well as knowledge. By referencing the future skills that students develop through their studies, we make employability visible within the curriculum. These skills are often already present but need to be made more explicit.

The Identify stage of our Embedding Employability Framework therefore helps you to extract and articulate the future skills that already exist within the curriculum and provides tools to enhance or add them where there are gaps.

To support this activity, we developed the Future Skills Taxonomy – a practical tool for staff co-created with over 90 staff and students from the University of Glasgow across two workshops in September 2024. At these workshops participants discussed and captured the future skills innate to their different subjects, creating a shared language across disciplines.

You can use this shared language in programme and course documentation such as aims, intended learning outcomes and assessment, to create a consistent way of talking with students about their future skills.

Example: intended learning outcomes

Our current intended learning outcomes typically focus on the knowledge and disciplinary skills that students gain but reference to future skills can be vague (i.e., build practical skills), detailed at a high level (i.e., articulate knowledge) or used inconsistently. Use this shared language to create a new skills-related ILO or to transform an existing ILO into something that is more explicitly skills-focused.

What do you need to do? 

Using our future skills taxonomy, we are asking you to understand the skills and employability value of your discipline and clearly articulate this to students through programme and course documentation (i.e., aims, ILOs and assessment).

What support is provided at this stage? 

  • The University of Glasgow Future Skills Taxonomy – a practical tool showcasing our shared language to talk about future skills with students
  • Guidance to create a skills-focused learning outcome or to transform an existing ILO
  • Access to relevant data and information that could inform your skills outcomes 
  • You can also contact your College Careers & Employability Manager to arrange a personalised 1:1 conversation to help further understand the skills and employability value of your teaching.

Future Skills Taxonomy

Future Skills Taxonomy 

View our co-created practical tool for staff that showcases our shared language of approximately 250 future skills. Only UofG members of staff can view this link.