THE DEVELOPMENT AND ASSESSMENT OF PERSONAL TRANSFERABLE SKILLS DURING WORK‐BASED PLACEMENTS

ABSTRACT

The article focuses on the development and assessment of skills during the work‐based placements of business studies sandwich degree students. A total of forty‐two skills are identified and these have been subsumed within two distinct frameworks according to their general or vocational nature. The importance of the work‐based placement In acquiring these skills is borne out when this is compared against a variety of other methods.

Aggregated students’ ratings have been compared with those of employers. Whilst there appears to be some agreement about development having occurred during the placement for virtually all skills, the research highlights major inconsistencies between employers and students in their ratings of the actual level of proficiency finally achieved. This discrepancy between student and employer assessments suggests that a more comprehensive and systematic approach to assessment is required if formal credit is to be given for work‐based learning within degree programmes. This could involve techniques such as triangulation, contract learning or the assessment of competencies, but the difficulty of ensuring a common frame of reference between the parties involved, and across the methods of assessment employed, is likely to remain a major issue, particularly among those advocating formal credit towards degree classifications.