Students, staff and employers collaborate on successful HE STEM project

In March 2011 work began on the HE STEM project ‘Developing a student-led employability audit toolkit for HE STEM curricula’, led by Dr Barrie Cooper of the University of Exeter.

The project stemmed from recognition of the need for universities to establish greater engagement with graduate employers to ensure that the employment needs of both employers and students are met within HE curricula. The project also sought to address the increasing pressures emerging from surveys, such as the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) and National Student Survey (NSS), to improve employability support in undergraduate degree programmes.

Working with a number of local employers such as Centrax and Teach First, the team jointly established a set of skills and criteria that they would like their graduate employees to develop during their time at university. During July 2011, 12 maths and engineering students used the criteria to carry out a student-led audit to review the extent to which they considered their degree programmes provided them with the skills necessary for a graduate workplace.

The students produced a comprehensive report, made recommendations for module and degree improvement, and co-wrote a new Mathematics module to include skills such as group working and project management. The new module ran for the first time in the Autumn 2011 term and has been well received from all of the students involved.

Engineering student Holly Geipel says “This project has given me awareness of what’s going to be required when it comes to graduate jobs. I am now much more aware of the skills employers are looking for; when it comes to interviews I can give evidence of what I have done”.

Project lead Dr Barrie Cooper says "It has been incredible working alongside the students as they started to understand the employability skills that they’re going to need to develop in their degree and as they discover the extent to which they are included within their degree programme. They identified the gaps and worked together to try and make small changes sometimes that will have a big impact, but also work on new modules to design in some of these employability skills".

"We are seeing a massive change in the culture at universities, having students as co-creators in the curriculum."

As a direct result of this success, the project secured additional funding from the National HE STEM Programme to support the development of student-led employability audits at five universities across the country.

The five institutions who secured funding to support their own student audit were as follows:

• University of Birmingham
• University of Bradford
• University of Manchester
• Newcastle College
• University of the West of England

For more information on the project at Exeter and the subsequent projects implemented across the UK, please see the HE STEM web pages.