A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching in the disciplines
3 numeracy;
4 learning how to learn.
It is well documented that while employers highly value personal skills they commonly
note inadequacies in one or more aspects of communication and presentation (Ketteridge
and Fry, 1999). Most providers have now embedded explicit and progressive teaching,
practice and assessment of such skills in their courses.
In recent years the ‘skills’ list has expanded to include enterprise and entrepreneurship
and broadened to include such generic elements as ethics, sustainability, citizenship
and the development of appropriate attitudes (professionalism). The advent of progress
files and personal development planning may do much to encourage staff and
students to pay attention to these areas and to make time for reflection on their
development.
Case study 3: Enhancing employability aspects of a
bioscience degree programme
One tool to help programme teams to enhance employability aspects of
their course is the generically applicable employability audit, developed by the
Centre for Bioscience. The audit is formative and consists of a number of
headings:
1 Graduate employment;
2 Career path development ;
3 Relationship with employers;
4 Options for work experience;
5 Does your curriculum promote employability?
6 Are students helped in obtaining and developing careers?
7 Extra-curricular activities;
8 General.
Each heading covers a set of questions; for example, under 4 (Options for work
experience) questions include:
• Work experience encouraged during vacations?
• Sandwich placements encouraged as part of the course?
• Can student carry out in-course project work in real settings with employers?
• Are work experience/placements available in areas not involving your
specific discipline?
For each item the team then considers:
• What options could improve the provision?