Developing Employability Skills Workshops for Students’ Higher Education Achievement Reports

Abstract

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 London South Bank University’s introduction of the HEAR, the training team developed a pilot program 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 transferable and soft skills. The pilot focused 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 provision.

KEYWORDS:

• collaboration
• digital literacy
• Microsoft Office
• digital skills
• employability
• HEAR
• information literacy
• social media