Embedding employability in the curriculum: Preparing future ready graduates

Our primary aim was to support teaching staff in preparing graduates for their future lives and careers!

Lecturing staff told us that they were committed to preparing students for their future lives and careers. They said this means developing students’ capabilities in: solution seeking, proactivity, professional ethics, independent and critical thinking and more. BUT lecturers were uncertain, they asked for guidance on how to do this within discipline based courses.

As part of an Ako Aotearoa national funded project, representatives from several tertiary institutions and the New Zealand Association of Graduate Employers partnered to discover, trial and disseminate means of embedding employability in the curriculum.

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We have built understanding of curriculum based and co-curricula approaches to building employability attributes.

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We have developed and tested effective approaches to teaching for employability.

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We have produced a pedagogical framework to guide learning designers and teachers who are embedding employability within degree programmes.

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We have delivered a national programme of workshops to lecturers, programme designers and leaders in learning and teaching. The workshops have been very successful in showing people how to apply the pedagogical framework and redesign their courses.

Get the one-page overview

The easy-to-follow one-page handout provides an overview of the Future Ready Grads Project, including the background of the project, the pedagogical framework and the resources created.

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The Four Es of Employability

The Future Ready Grads pedagogical framework identifies four archetypal strategies for teaching. The 4 Es stand for: Enthuse, Explore, Expand and Exhibit. Executed in concert these teaching strategies promote transformative learning and build transferable employability capabilities.

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Our tried and tested materials can be used and adapted to run your own workshops.

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Why is offering our students co-curicula and extra-curricula experiences not enough? And a brilliant idea all the way from Scotland

Sep 26, 2019 | Case studies

Simon Riley and Gavin McCabe from the University of Edinburgh have developed what is in effect a blank canvas course that can be populated with individual or group projects based around virtually any topic. They have developed a flexible reflective experiential learning and assessment framework using an e-portfolio for awarding credit. They have been kind enough to share the details of their course with the team at the Future Ready Grads project. Simon and Gavin call these courses SLICCs (Student-Led, Individually Created Courses) and they are pure genius.

Attending the ‘Embedding Employability in the Curriculum’ workshop at HERDSA 2020

Sep 20, 2019 | Workshops

By Edward ElderI had probably only worked on the Future Ready Grads project one day a week for about a month when I clawed my way into the workshop room with more baggage under my eyes than I travel with (thanks to it being exam marking season). In other...

Community of Interest in Employability

Sep 12, 2019 | Presentations

Yesterday I joined a group of academics and listened to senior staff from Auckland Council, XERO, KiwiRail and MYOB talk about the characteristics they seek in graduates. It was fascinating. They illustrated how important it is for us to develop our students’ abilities to learn and learn fast, to be adaptable, communicative, culturally aware and collaborative.