Transferable Skills in Higher Education

Alison Assiter, Alison Assiter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781135356651
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This text uses a case study approach to show how life-skills can be developed in a range of higher education subject areas. It also looks at the changes which can be made to the curriculum to facilitate this sort of learning. The case studies are set against a more theoretical background.

Section Two:
Profiling and Transferable Skills

The process of profiling encourages students to become aware of the skills, abilities and qualities they possess or may want to develop. The process can help student learning by providing learning goals, by articulating what constitutes evidence for the attainment of these goals, and by relating assessment tasks to learning targets. It can also facilitate preparation for employment. In the latter domain, profiling may be invaluable in the process of preparing a CV, or it may help a student prepare for a job interview. Indeed, the process of encouraging students to think about the potentially transferable skills they may be gaining can be useful preparation for the workplace itself.

The Academic Board of the University of North London has adopted a policy making the profiling of personal competence an entitlement for all students. The following is the definition of profiling agreed by the Board: ‘a process which enables students to articulate and, where appropriate, act upon, what they have learned, to review and reflect upon this learning and to record their achievements and communicate these to others’. The Board then agreed an implementation strategy which will make profiling available to all students by 1996.

The Academic Board adopted this policy, following three years of piloting of a range of types of profiling system, and following extensive consultation involving many staff and students at the university, as well as employers with whom people at the university have connections. The university deliberately took the view that approaches to profiling should be owned by school or faculty teams, and so it did not develop centrally a ‘model’ profiling system. This has had the advantage that profiling systems have been developed that are relevant to particular subject areas, but it has the potential disadvantage that an individual student on the university’s modular scheme may encounter different approaches to the process. The university has also strongly emphasised, both in the definition adopted by Academic Board, and in the extensive staff development programme that has been taking place, that it is the process of profiling that is important – in other words, the process of developing, on the one hand, a person’s awareness of the skills or abilities they may possess, and, on the other, a recognition of the skills or abilities that they would like to develop. Many of the employers who have been consulted have emphasised this; that it is not the production of voluminous documentation that matters. The documentation is likely to be valuable more as an aid in the process of profiling than it is as a validated means of certification of skills that are ‘objectively’ present. The process itself, moreover, will not work unless students are helped to find opportunities for gaining skills they may decide they would like to acquire.

Evaluations of the pilots have produced mixed results: some of these results are described in the chapters that follow. On the positive side, in the BABS programme, and the year abroad, for example, students and employers argued that the process of profiling provided a framework for learning that was previously absent.

In other areas, evaluations have revealed that some students have failed to respond to the invitation to think about their skills development, while others have expressed very strong support both for the principles behind the profiling process and for the process itself. Staff teams at the university are learning from the experience of one another and from experience elsewhere.

The chapters in this section of the book describe some of the profiling systems that have been developed in the university and articulate some of the ways in which these systems help facilitate the development of transferable skills.

The chapter by Sue Bailey describes profiling in Consumer Studies; that by Paul Joyce et al. outlines a profiling system developed for the placement year in the BA Business Studies degree. Dave Taylor provides a picture of the process of development of a profiling system for students on Social Science degree programmes and Ken MacKinnon outlines the profiling system developed for students of Film Studies. Inge Weber-Newth and Martha Dueñas-Tancred describe a profiling system developed to provide a means of accreditation for the concurrent learning acquired by language students on their year abroad. Finally Barbara Page and Anne Brockbank, respectively from chemistry and Business Studies, provide two further perspectives.

Overall the chapters describe a range of profiling systems, designed to fulfil a number of purposes. The overriding aim in each case, however, remains that of providing a framework that is designed to help students to develop their transferable skills.

Chapter 6
Profiling Work Experience in Consumer Studies

Sue Bailey

The market for consumer products and services has grown dramatically over the last 15 years. This growth is unlikely to slow down. However, the increasing sophistication of products and awareness by consumers of issues related to food, materials and services that affect their daily lives has put emphasis on the need for trained specialists.

Since the mid-1980s there has been a shift towards courses with Consumer Studies or Science in their titles and away from Home Economics titled courses. This reflects the wider employment opportunities that have developed, as well as substantial evolution in both areas. The recent strengthening of the status of Food within Technology in the National Curriculum and the recognition of high quality teaching in the Home Economics area by the Department for Education (DFE) indicates the support for the subject area.

There are currently over 20 degree courses in the Consumer Studies area. Nationally, from its inception until recently, in Consumer Studies and related areas 500–600 students graduate annually (CNAA, 1992). Employer demand remains healthy for these graduates who possess knowledge and skills that employers want.

Consumer Studies specialists, for example Home Economists, aim to provide scientific and technical skills relating to the creation, marketing, retailing, management and use of consumer products and services; they are involved in the development of products and services that match consumer needs. Courses such as the BSc (Hons) Food and Consumer Studies degree and BTEC HND in Consumer Studies at the University of North London seek to develop the knowledge-base and provide a means for development of these skills.

Short work placements

Historically, Consumer Studies and similar allied courses have had short work experience placements as an integral part of degree and diploma courses. Two of the major aims of such placements have been to give students an insight into the working environment and to develop interpersonal skills alongside work-based skills and knowledge. An extensive research study of such placements concluded that ‘there should be an attempt to effectively communicate the objectives of the placement to the placement agencies’ (Cross, 1988, p.17, section 3.3). This was perceived both in terms of overall objectives and student-specific objectives.

This chapter will discuss the development of monitoring transferable skills with current University of North London Consumer Studies degree students, through the mechanism of short work placements. The main focus of the chapter is a description of the EHE project that considered the most efficient method of recording of skills development and setting of objectives and resulted in the creation and implementation of student and employer placement booklets.

At a conference following up the CNAA research (see Cross, 1988) it was suggested that placement supervisors should be involved in setting up student-specific objectives. This was subsequently included in the Code of Practice for Short Work Experience Placements (Bath, 1989). This highlighted the value of involving students in negotiating placement objectives as criteria for assessing their progress. Since the publication of the Code, many academic institutions have modified their approach to placements, hence the need for re-evaluating the process and intention.

Developing the profiling project

A clear mechanism for gaining the most efficient use of the short time students are out on placement and focusing on the development of skills and recording skills development was perceived to be necessary; this formed the basis of the project proposal. The project was funded through an EHE grant as part of the university’s commitment to developing student competences, their assessment and assimilation into learning.

The aim of the project therefore was to develop a suitable skills profiling system and improve the use of the work experience period for BSc Food and Consumer Studies students. The project was also aimed to ensure that employers recognised the importance of individual skills development as a major focus of the work placement, rather than, as occasionally happens, just ‘giving them a job to do’. A smaller comparative study was also carried out on the suitability of a modified skills profiling system with first-year BTEC HND Consumer Studies students. This is described briefly towards the end of this chapter as the main focus was on the degree module.

The most suitable type of profiling system was thought to be a formative profiling system. This is a combination of forms described in ‘Profiling in Higher Education’ as a ‘negotiated outcomes’ profile (Fenwick et al., 1992, p.11) together with a personal development profile. To achieve this involved creating a method of recording the level of possession of skills relevant to the subject area and ensuring students and employers jointly discussed and set achievable objectives.

Objectives set for the project were to:

• develop a profiling format to encompass the pre- and post-placement achievement of learning objectives;
• tighten up the methodology of assessment;
• develop a learning contract negotiated between student, industrial and academic tutors;
• develop company/organisational profiles as placement briefings for new placement students.

The work placement module

Food and Consumer Studies students have the option of taking the work placement module as a third-year unit of the BSc Modular Science degree scheme. This is based on a 4–6-week unpaid placement typically in the summer vacation before the third year. There is also the option of one day a week during the first semester of the third year. The assessment for this unit consists of two reports and a viva.

The main aims of the module are to apply and adapt the principles studied in an academic environment to the workplace and to provide the basics for further study in the third year. The objectives therefore can be summarised as gaming working environment experience, relating academic study to practice, developing personal and interpersonal skills, awareness of departmental structure and culture, career choice preparation, technical development and final-year project ideas.

The work placement module is one that any student – such as a biochemist or ecologist from the School of Life Sciences – can choose. To ensure a level of comparability between different subject areas and to allow for credit for development of skills the report format was changed in 1994 from a single project style report to two reports. The first report now includes an analysis of the placement and the student’s skills acquisition and the second report is based on an academic area, relating it to learning developed in the workplace. Students keep a log-book detailing their skills development which is used as a basis for the first placement report. Students also have a viva.

The Food and Consumer Studies students form the greatest number of students taking this degree module so the project considered the development of a skills profiling system solely with them.

Group feedback strategy was used as a technique to canvass the students’ opinions of the strengths and weaknesses of the module and its operation. Although the technique is limited in terms of its reliability and application to a range of different areas within an institution, it is a highly practical, low-cost, high response rate technique involving a high level of student participation, including debate and agreement on collective suggestions. Meetings were held with students – first with third-year students who had undertaken placements the previous summer, then with second-year students planning for placement. These meetings were structured so small groups of students could express their opinions through discussion. Opinions were summarised and comments from each group presented to the whole group and a consensus reached.

After evaluation of comments from third-year students who had taken an earlier version of the module, it was felt that, although students were obviously aware of the benefits of the work placement module and were very positive about its value, their perceptions of it for personal skills development was limited. Concerns voiced by students included limited employer expectations and the quality of the placement varying depending on the organisation. Many students suggested that the work placement module should be compulsory.

Students perceptions of valuable skills

To gain a measure of skills that students perceived to be valuable, second-year students were consulted. Students discussed in small, focused groups which were the important skills they thought that placements should develop. These were then summarised and presented to the whole group for discussion and prioritising. Skills areas were summarised as:

• communication;
• intellectual – including research, problem solving, organisation and planning;
• technical skills – creative, aesthetic, work related;
• interpersonal – integration with others, team work, time management, responsibility, discipline, self-confidence, appreciation of other cultures, problem solving;
• numerical – report production, results presentation.

Noticeable omissions were that there was no separation of communication skills into areas such as formal and informal means of communication or spoken and written forms, nor any consideration of specialist techniques such as presentations, reports or articles. Interpersonal skills did not include ‘negotiating’ or the ability to identify a target and reach it. Numerical skills were limited since ‘information technology’ and ‘using and interpreting data’ were both specifically excluded.

After compilation of this s...