Can students be taught to articulate employability skills?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on research findings from a teaching and learning intervention that explored whether undergraduate university students can be taught to articulate their employability skills effectively to prospective employers and to retain this ability post-course.

Design/methodology/approach The study included 3,400 students in 44 courses at a large Canadian university. Stage 1 involved a course-level teaching and learning intervention with the experimental student group, which received employability skills articulation instruction. Stage 2 involved an online survey administered six months post-course to the experimental group and the control group. Both groups responded to two randomly generated questions using the Situation/Task, Actions, Result (STAR) format, a format that employers commonly rely on to assess job candidates’ employability skills. The researchers compared the survey responses from the experimental and control groups.

Findings Survey results demonstrate that previous exposure to the STAR format was the only significant factor affecting students’ skills articulation ability. Year of study and program (co-operative or non-co-operative) did not influence articulation.

Practical implications The findings suggest that universities should integrate institution-wide, course-level employability skills articulation assignments for students in all years of study and programs (co-op and non-co-op).

Originality/value This research is novel because its study design combines practical, instructional design with empirical research of significant scope (institution-wide) and participant size (3,400 students), contributing quantitative evidence to the employability skills articulation discussion. By surveying students six months post-course, the study captures whether articulation instruction can be recalled, an ability of particular relevance for career preparedness.