Developing employability skills workshops for students’ Higher Education Achievement Reports

What is it about?

The Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) is a national initiative to record academic and extra-curricular achievement throughout a student’s time at university. The Library and Learning Resources training team’s pre-existing employability-focused content included a lecture on social media and digital footprint, and the Microsoft Office Specialist award. In response to LSBU’s introduction of the HEAR, the training team developed a pilot programme of workshops with a focus on employability and social media. The training team created formal assessments, which is a requirement of the HEAR. A literature review revealed a focus on transferrable and soft skills. The pilot focussed on developing skills that enabled students to create a professional online presence. Linking information literacy and digital literacy training to employability encouraged student participation. A recommendation of this case study is for libraries to consider the development of explicitly linked employability workshops alongside the more traditional bibliographic tools and skills.

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Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The paper demonstrates how close collaboration between librarians and digital skills trainers can lead to developing workshops that combine skillsets from both sets of trainers. These workshops are well received by students, as they teach skills and knowledge around the areas of social media and the digital footprint that employers want. This paper also demonstrates the benefits for engaging with the Higher Education Achievement Report to promote library and digital skills services to a wider audience.

Perspectives