Developing key skills

Letterkenny Institute of Technology

March 2013

Sally Brown

http://sally-brown.netEmerita Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University,

Adjunct Professor, University of the Sunshine Coast, Central Queensland and James Cook University

Queensland

Visiting Professor, University of Plymouth and Liverpool John Moores University.

In this workshop, we aim to explore how to:

review how a programme-level approach can be taken to fostering competency in these areas;

consider how skills development can be built into induction and re-induction at the beginning of each academic year;

explore how assessment of skills can be made to be authentic and fit-for-purpose.

From the Irish National Council for Curriculum and Assessment re skills in schools

What skills do learners need to prepare them for life, learning and work in the 21st century? Things have changed in the world in recent years and continue to change every day. As well as learning knowledge, learners need to develop skills to create new knowledge and to deal with and navigate their way through this new world. There are five skills identified as central to teaching and learning across the curriculum at senior cycle. These are critical and creative thinking, communicating, information processing, being personally effective and working with others.

Why is skills development important?

Graduates leaving higher education need a range of skills to prepare them for employment and their future lives, building on competences developed in skills and life before entry to HE.

These skills include information processing, communicating, being personally effective, working with others and critical & creative thinking.

Research clearly indicates that the integration of skills development within the curriculum is more effective than teaching them separately, but it's often difficult to envisage how to do this without eating into subject teaching time.

In my other workshop we are considering essential literacies that students need:

Academic literacy: understanding how higher education works;

Information literacy: understanding how to locate and, most importantly, select information;

Assessment literacy: understanding how assessment systems work in universities;

Social literacy: understanding how to work with others using emotional intelligence.

Key skills are also commonly called (with variations):

Core skills; Common skills; Core capabilities; Employability skills; Graduate attributes… et al

But in essence we are all seeking to enhance students abilities through and beyond their subject disciplines to enable them to develop and demonstrate the skills they need for life-long learning and employment.

What kinds of skills do graduates need? The ability to:

Communicate effectively orally and in writing, in the right register and style for each occasion;

Process information from a wide variety of sources, and to select the most relevant for the current occasion and context;

Use relevant and efficient information technologies to seek, manage and use data;

Demonstrate numeracy in ways that are fit-for-purpose; Be personally effective by managing time, resources and

self to achieve what needs to be done; Work with others productively and effectively, sharing

leadership and contributing positively to group tasks.

Others would also add that skills should include:

The ability to be entrepreneurial (or intrapreneurial as Pauline Kneale would have it), bringing vitality and personal resources into new contexts to create opportunities;

The ability to persuade and influence others; Creativity and critical thinking; Opportunities for self-pacing, for those students

with substantial pre-existing skills; Opportunities to enable students to share their skills

with one another, thus further developing their own inter-personal skills.

Embedding skills

Teaching and developing skills as a separate activity from the mainstream curriculum is wasteful and inefficient of resources;

Students tend to engage with learning activities when they can see the sense of what they are doing and can put it into practice immediately and in context;

Some staff are reluctant to ‘sacrifice’ content delivery time for skills development, but it is necessary to do so in a competitive climate;

Teams need to work together to embed skills.

Towards a programme level approach

When course developers work independently without mutual consultation, there is a danger that skills are either over-assessed in multiple modules or missed out altogether;

A programme level approach makes it possible for course teams to map out a systematic approach to skills development and assessment;

Such an approach enables skills to be progressively evidenced and evaluated at different levels, rather than using a scattergun approach.

http://www.alverno.edu/landingpages/whywereworthit/qualityoflearning/

Skills development at induction and re-induction

The first six weeks of the first semester of the first year is crucial for student success (Yorke and Longden) so introducing skills development in this period can set a good foundation for student achievement and retention;

If students can ‘master’ basic skills early in a programme, this is likely to improve confidence and ultimate success;

Many HEIs nowadays are using initial immersive experiences where students work on live projects to enable them to feel fully engaged with the subject they are set to study (Pickford and Brown).

Re-induction at the start of each academic year

There can be a long gap for students from the end of first year of study to the start of the second year with little required of students, and a similar gap between years 2 and 3;

Action plans to reduce the sophomore slump at the beginning of the second year of study commonly review the range of skills needed for the coming year and re-induct students into those most necessary for success;

As programmes become progressively harder and more demanding, student skills may be stretched and may need refreshing.

Assessment of skills requires:

A flexible approach by the staff designing and doing the assessment to ensure that work that goes beyond that which was originally envisaged (unexpected outcomes) is rewarded appropriately;

Use of a range of assessment agents including for example, tutors, students themselves, peers, practice managers, employers and clients.;

A focus on fit-for-purpose and authentic assessment, rather than proxy assessments (e.g. being able to do something rather than just write about it);

Assessment for not just of learning.

Assessment for learning1. Tasks should be challenging, demanding higher order learning

and integration of knowledge learned in both the university and other contexts;

2. Learning and assessment should be integrated, assessment should not come at the end of learning but should be part of the learning process;

3. Students are involved in self assessment and reflection on their learning, they are involved in judging performance;

4. Assessment should encourage metacognition, promoting thinking about the learning process not just the learning outcomes;

5. Assessment should have a formative function, providing ‘feedforward’ for future learning which can be acted upon. There is opportunity and a safe context for students to expose problems with their study and get help; there should be an opportunity for dialogue about students’ work;

Assessment for learning6. Assessment expectations should be made visible to students

as far as possible;

7. Tasks should involve the active engagement of students developing the capacity to find things out for themselves and learn independently;

8. Tasks should be authentic; worthwhile, relevant and offering students some level of control over their work;

9. Tasks are fit for purpose and align with important learning outcomes;

10. Assessment should be used to evaluate teaching as well as student learning.

(Bloxham and Boyd)

Assessment of skills needs to be:

Rewarding: students need to feel they are involved in authentic activities that have value and relevance;

Inclusive: so that students feel part of the programme rather than marginalised. Inclusive assessment uses cross-cultural case studies, references and examples, and mainstreams disability provision;

Engaging: without pandering to the lowest common denominator, designers of assignments need to consider how best to get students at all levels excited about the tasks being undertaken.

We should also aim to make assessment:

Developmental so students are demonstrating the skills they need for future employment, research and life;

Personalised: by building in elements of one-to-one interaction and choice even when working with large cohorts;

Supported by appropriate technologies; Enjoyable: both for the students being

assessed and the staff doing the marking.

Conclusions Employers have high expectations of graduates

leaving higher education, both in terms of subject knowledge and generic capabilities;

Those with a well-developed skill-set are likely to have a competitive advantage over others in the jobs market;

No job or profession nowadays can rely on one-off initial training to last a working lifetime nor can graduates expect to work in a single post for more than a few years, so flexible skills are essential.

And…

Furthermore, higher education has an important role to play in furthering the personal development and self-efficacy of individuals, and skills development has a crucial part to play in achieving this;

For this reason, HEIs need to take seriously the need to engender and develop a wide range of skills in our students and to embed them within the curriculum.

Useful references

Bloxham, S and Boyd, P. (2007) Developing effective assessment in higher education: a practical guide. Maidenhead Open University Press

Boud, D (1995) Enhancing learning through self-assessment, London: Routledge.

Kneale, P. (2011) resources.jorum.ac.uk/xmlui/.../EDORintrapbriefintroPK1.ppt

Liverpool John Moores University: the Sophomore slump http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/ntfs/ntfsproject_LiverpoolJohnMoores10

References 2

Mentkowski, M., & Associates (2000) Learning that lasts: Integrating learning, development, and performance in college and beyond. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mortiboys, A. (2005) Teaching with emotional intelligence, Abingdon: Routledge.

National Council for Curriculum and Assessmenthttp://www.ncca.ie/en/Curriculum_and_Assessment/Post-Primary_Education/Senior_Cycle/Key_Skills/

Pickford R. and Brown, S. (2006) Assessing live and practical skills, London: Routledge.

References 3

Sadler, D. R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems, Instructional Science 18, 119-144.

Salovey, P. and Meyer, J. (1990) Emotional Intelligence, Imagination, Cognition and Personality Vol 9 (3) 185-211.

Yorke, M. (1999), Leaving Early: Undergraduate Non-Completion in Higher Education, London, Taylor and Francis.

Yorke, M. and Longden, B. (2004) Retention and Student Success in Higher Education, Maidenhead, Open University Press

Yorke, M. and Knight, P. (2006) Learning and Employabilityhttp://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/employability/id460_embedding_employability_into_the_curriculum_338.pdf.