Employability, lifelong learning, personal development planning and eportfolios at HKUST (original) (raw)
Related papers
Human Resource Development Quarterly, 2000
Workforce education, school to work, corporate partnerships, and competencybased education are initiatives to make education more relevant to society, and by extension, to the global economy. The Bases of Competence: Skills for Lifelong Learning and Employability attempts to clarify competencies business needs from current post-secondary school graduates. The authors claim that it "is a call for reform to remake the match, to restore the historic role of higher education in preparing graduates for the workplace of the future rather than the past" (1998, p. xii). Data were collected over a ten-year period-from eight hundred graduates and students who were working in twenty major companies in Canada-about the skills new employees need and the skills they actually possess. Evers, the lead researcher, and his colleagues expected to find technical skills that were lacking. Instead, four generic competencies surfaced: managing self, communicating, managing people and tasks, and mobilizing innovation and change. According to the authors, the book is of interest to instructional development specialists, academic leaders, faculty, and human resource professionals. Indeed, the book' s audience could also include career counselors and academic faculties who want to convert from a higher education emphasis to a workforce education emphasis. The authors promise the book can serve as a valuable resource for the development of transition programs "out of higher education and into work" (1998, p. xxv; emphasis in original). They proclaim that "executives must incorporate these skills in the selection, training, development, and retention of employees. The agenda for all is a learning culture fostered in education and workplace" (1998, p. xiv). However, the authors fail to provide practical and useful guidance for companies to use. The purpose of the book is to provide practitioners "with a common language of general skills needed" (p. xviii) by graduates for lifelong learning and employability. The authors are concerned "with the interface between education and employment" (p. 3) and specifically that colleges teach students skills useful in the workplace. Unfortunately, Evers and colleagues fail to create a common language or demonstrate how a business and education partnership promotes the skills necessary for lifelong learning and employability of workers. They do discuss what educators can do to incorporate the competencies into the curriculum. The book is divided into four parts: understanding the nature of competence, the essential skills and competencies, developing individual competence, and several illustrative case studies. Part One ("Understanding Competence")
Personal Learning Planning. A Framework for Lifelong Career Development. NICEC Briefing
1999
The Personal Learning Planning (PLP) model focuses on the needs and ongoing development of the individual, links career guidance to the learning process, and links learning to work. It identifies ways in which the Careers Service (CS) in Britain can work in partnership with other professionals and provides consistent and continuing support for the individual's career development on a lifelong basis. Individuals need to be encouraged to engage in a regular process of reviewing, recording, and planning in relation to their learning and work throughout their lives with the progress file as the reference point. Foundations for the process should be laid in schools and individuals encouraged to manage the process themselves with access to ongoing support. A key worker should be responsible to provide support, including access to specialist guidance for those who need it. Guidance provision should be available at three levels: core service for all; filtered service for those who need specialist help; and intensive service for those in particular need of ongoing specialist help. CS's role is to secure the agreement of the partner organization/professionals to support the model; offer key worker training and support; and provide core, filtered, and intensive services. (Examples of the model are attached for six target groups within CS's statutory client group: year 9 pupils; key stage 4 pupils; full-time post-16 students; work-based trainees; unemployed young people; and employed young people. A transparency master of the PLP process is provided.) (YLB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Preparation for lifelong learning using ePortfolios
European Journal of Engineering Education, 2007
Rapid technological change, increasing globalization and a changing world of employment with multiple roles during one's professional life are necessitating a change from knowledge to learning societies. Full participation requires lifelong learning skills, meaning the ability to solve problems, work both independently and in a team, communicate effectively in all formats and on all levels, and self-direct one's learning and professional development needs. Universities need to take responsibility in preparing students for lifelong learning. While engineering and science degrees traditionally do not emphasize the importance of lifelong learning skills new programmes of study are now being introduced, often using electronic portfolios to support engagement with learning objectives and reflection. This article describes an electronic portfolio initiative that is targeted at engineering and computer science students. The initiative aims to create awareness among students on the nature and importance of lifelong learning skills, to facilitate the development of such skills and to assist students in showcasing their competence regarding these skills. Interviews with industry representatives regarding the characteristics of a lifelong learner and the values of constructing and presenting portfolios were conducted and have resulted in strong support for the electronic portfolio initiative. The article provides background on lifelong learning and electronic portfolios, outlines the design of the initiative and then focuses on feedback from industry representatives.
2009
Efficient and effective lifelong learning requires that people can make informed decisions about their continuous personal development in the different stages of their life. In this paper we state that lifelong learners need to be characterized as decision-makers. In order to improve the quality of their decisions, we propose the development of an integrated lifelong learning and employment support system, which traces learners' competence development and provides a decision support environment. An abstract conceptual model has been developed and the main design ideas have been documented using Z notation. Moreover, we analyzed the main technical challenges for the realization of the target system: competence information fusion, decision analysis models, spatial indexing structures and browsing structures and visualization of competence-related information objects.
Portfolio tools: learning and teaching strategies to facilitate development of graduate attributes
2000
Background and Aims: Based on previous developments at UNSW of an electronic Graduate Attributes Portfolio (Brawley et al. 2003), and the increasing body of evidence on the educational use of portfolios, this project embedded the Portfolio into a Bachelor of Psychology course, with a particular emphasis on professional development and employability skills of students. The primary aim of this project