I thank the joint committee for giving us the opportunity to make this presentation. I will explain the roles of my colleagues more fully. All of them sit on the steering committee for the project. Ms Orlaith Tunney is the project manager and also works as a careers adviser in Trinity College. Therefore, she brings an insight to the discussion of the needs and experiences of employers in recruiting graduates and the needs and experiences of students when seeking a career path after graduation. Dr.Jennifer Bruen lectures in German in Dublin City University and brings a wealth of experience to the project from the perspective of the value of teaching modern languages at third level as well as being familiar with developments in teaching and learning activities in the classroom. She is also one of the lecturers who implemented a pilot programme last term as part of the project. Ms Caroline Nash is an assistant director of IBEC and the voice of the employers on the project. She brings to the table a practical viewpoint on the requirements of employers. She is also a graduate of German from Trinity College and thus understands the skills required by modern languages graduates when making the transition from college to the workplace.
The purpose of our presentation is to inform the joint committee of the work of the project and put it into the context of education strategy; to summarise the findings of our research report which committee members have to hand and to make recommendations as to how the work of the project can be advanced in the future.
The transferable skills in third level modern languages curricula project commenced in January 2003 and is funded by the Higher Education Authority under its strategic initiatives scheme which affords higher education institutions opportunities to develop innovative projects in areas of key national interest. The project is being funded under the support for teaching strand of the scheme and collaboratively implemented by Trinity College, Dublin; Dublin City University and the Waterford Institute of Technology.
The aim of this three year project is clear. It is to improve third level students' awareness of and competence in a range of transferable skills. A broad definition of such skills is that they are skills developed in one situation which can be transferred to another, for example, communication skills, time management, problem solving and team work.
A secondary aim of the project is to increase awareness among staff at all levels of higher education of the importance of recognising and developing these skills. The project is being piloted with modern language students — hence the focus of the research in the report — but its work has implications for all disciplines in higher education.
As we all know, education is not simply about acquiring knowledge, it is also about the development of skills, values and attitudes; in other words, it promotes the holistic development of the student. The development of transferable skills forms only one part of that holistic approach but it is an integral part. The role of higher education in fostering the personal development of students, including the development of such skills, has been acknowledged by key stakeholders at national and international level, including IBEC, the HEA and the European Union. Despite this, however, the fact is that not all students can articulate the personal development they have achieved during their time in university.
The project was initiated by the careers service in each of the participating institutions. One of the roles of a careers service in higher education is to develop students' employability which is defined as a synergic combination of personal qualities, skills of various kinds and subject understanding. It is not only about securing and retaining employment but also about having the capacity to continually develop and articulate one's abilities. One of the main reasons the project was initiated was that careers advisers were meeting employers who were seeking graduates with a range of skills. They were also meeting many students, particularly those pursuing non-vocational programmes such as languages, who were completely lacking in confidence and awareness about what they had to offer employers upon graduation, beyond subject knowledge.
A number of national and international reports have stated employers value transferable skills as much as, if not more than, a good degree. Our own research confirms this. It is also sometimes reported that employers are not satisfied with the level of transferable skills demonstrated by graduates from our third level institutions or that graduates are not sufficiently prepared for the labour market. Ireland promotes itself on the fact that it has a skilled and flexible workforce and one of the best educated populations in Europe. To maintain such a quality education system which has been recognised as being essential for contributing to Ireland's competitive advantage in the global marketplace, it is important that it is responsive to the needs of employers. This means not only creating courses to develop skills in technical areas such as research, biotechnology and ICT but also ensuring graduates possess the more generic skills required to be effective in today's workplace.
Our third level graduates are entering an employment market which is vastly different from what it was even ten years ago. The increasing necessity to work in teams, multi-task and take responsibility for managing one's own work, combined with a greater likelihood of changing jobs and careers numerous times during one's lifetime, requires graduates to demonstrate a broad portfolio of skills, including flexibility, independence and other transferable skills. In addition, many graduate jobs are arising in newer industries such as the services sector, jobs which require such transferable skills, or graduates are entering occupations which do not directly relate to the subject they studied at third level. An example of this is shown by one of the findings of our own report which points out that only about 68% of the graduates surveyed were using their specialist knowledge, that is, their language skills, at the time of the survey, even though 80% of those surveyed expected to use these skills when they graduated.
Here in Ireland the fourth report of the expert group on future skills needs highlighted the important role transferable soft skills played in maintaining a flexible and adaptable workforce and emphasised that employers were increasingly looking for a balance between core subject knowledge and soft skills. The report explicitly recommended that greater emphasis be put on soft skills at third level and that these skills should form an explicit and integral part of the national policy agenda. Our own project supports these recommendations and is independently working towards achieving these objectives. It does recognise, however, that it is important to maintain a balance between academic content and skills development and respect the notion of academic freedom. However, if skills development is seen as a core objective of higher education, as has been suggested, this is best achieved by how a course is taught, rather than by focusing on its content.
The development of transferable skills has received little formal recognition at any level of the education system to date. If our graduates cannot articulate the skills they are developing, as is the experience of careers advisers and some employers, education is clearly not delivering everything it should be. In terms of higher education, the HEA recognises that the student experience includes the development of knowledge, skills and competencies but very little has been proposed on a practical level to ensure this happens.
The report the joint committee has before it presents the work of the first year of the transferable skills project and is the basis for a pilot programme implemented in each of the three institutions participating in the project. The report presents the findings of surveys carried out with four key stakeholder groups in higher education — students, academic staff, graduates and employers — and, as pointed out, focuses primarily on modern languages. It draws the findings of all four surveys together to give an overview of how transferable skills are developed in modern language programmes. I will outline a few key findings which emerged from the research.
Our research shows that transferable skills are considered by all stakeholders to be one of the most important factors for graduates when seeking employment. They were considered more important than a good academic record, specialist subject knowledge and work experience. This is a particularly relevant finding as we know from experience that too often students tend to see learning as a means to an end, that is, achieving results, and unless given the right opportunities, miss out on recognising the value of the process and effort which goes into achieving those results in the first place.
The research identified a number of skills which were regarded as being very important for students to develop in higher education, for example, oral communication and time management, followed by team work, presentation skills and coping with multiple tasks. Obviously, these are skills which are valuable in all aspects of our lives, not only in the workplace. The research also found that these skills were already an integral part of academic programmes. Oral communication, research skills, written communication and presentation skills emerged as being well developed but this contrasts somewhat with the experience of careers advisers of meeting students who are not aware of the skills they have developed. It is clear that unless skills are made explicit, students have trouble in recognising them. Certain skills such as time management, planning and problem solving — the more organisational skills — which were regarded as important were considered to be among the less well developed.
The research presented in the report forms the basis of a pilot programme implemented in language courses in each of the three institutions' last term. The lecturers who participated each chose particular skills they wished their students to improve and each chose different ways of integrating them into their courses. The challenge was to integrate the skills seamlessly within the academic content, rather than to develop them outside the content in order that students would see the relevance of the skills they were developing to what they were learning and use existing structures in an already time pressured environment to work on skill development. Some of the most often cited experiences which develop students' skills and self-awareness are work experience and time spent abroad but the reality is that not all students get the opportunity to avail of such programmes. The project is seeking a way to reach all students equally and shift the focus from what is taught to how things are taught.
The results of the pilot project which are being compiled are very encouraging. They show that the self-reported ratings by students of their skills were significantly higher at the end of the term than at the beginning, compared to a similar control group. In addition, feedback from interviews with students shows a generally favourable reaction towards making skills explicit within their programmes. The students reported feeling more self-confident and self-aware simply by having these skills placed in the foreground in their courses. A recommendation from the majority of the students was that skills should be made explicit in the early years of a programme with more subtle reinforcement in later years.
Among the recommendations the project is bringing forward is for higher education to explicitly recognise the importance of developing transferable skills alongside subject-based knowledge. By this we mean that, at the very least, through enhancing the function of teaching and learning, such skills should be written into the learning outcomes of all programmes. We call on the joint committee and the Government to ensure this happens, not only at third level but at all levels of the education system as a means of recognising the value of such skills in maintaining a buoyant economy and a participative society. We also call on the Government and the HEA, in the administration and awarding of funds from the recently announced strategic innovation fund for higher education, to ensure the value of transferable skills as a core function of teaching and learning is explicitly addressed and recognised. This project is not about taking the focus away from academic activities but about achieving excellence in them. The project recognises that education is about developing the whole person. This holistic view is essential so that our students can graduate as well rounded, competent and confident individuals who are fully prepared to contribute to the development of both our economy and our society.
