An evaluation of a translation intervention to raise awareness of employability skills gained from higher education

Abstract

The challenge of ensuring that graduates of higher education are employable has become a pedagogical issue for teaching colleagues at universities worldwide. Employability, as a theme, has changed the general environment of higher education (Frankham, 2017, p.632) and is strongly emphasised on degree programmes’ planning for desired outcomes (Moore and Morton, 2017, p.591). This paper reports on an evaluation of an intervention that was conducted with eight final year (Level 6) students from multiple disciplines to investigate to what extent a translation exercise can raise student awareness of employability skills gained through their higher education experience. This study shows that through a skills translation exercise, students’ ability to highlight their graduate skills, which align to personal specification skills such as communication, organisation, and business acumen, increased. This paper reports on an intervention that was valued by the participants as having a positive impact on their understanding of their own employability and explores how translating discipline specific skills through short conversations can have relevance in the pressurised world of higher education.