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Transferable Model for Key Skills Development
A Strategic Approach to Undergraduate Key Skills Development
(University of Salford)
The main aim of the Salford Key Skills Project was to design and implement a strategic and transferable, institution-wide model of undergraduate key skills development. The model addressed development, delivery and accreditation of key skills. The project has achieved this aim and key skills development should be sustainable in the long-term through the project recommendations for future action.
In order to enable effective implementation across the institution, and rather than a bottom-up or top-down approach, individuals at all levels - from senior management through faculty level to teaching staff - within the departments were involved in the project. Activities to develop key skills were undertaken in the form of:
- Discipline-based projects to include key skills in the curriculum. For example, in a joint project between the Careers Service and the Faculty of Social Science, undergraduates now have an opportunity to identify and develop skills through various work experience opportunities.
- The establishment of cross-institution groups centred around broader issues relating to key skills. For example, a work-based learning and assessment group oversaw the piloting of the Edexcel Professional Certificate in Work-Based Experience, now validated for use by the four faculties in the University.
- A structured staff development programme. As well as numerous in-house activities, materials have been developed, which are also available to other institutions, to support the on-going development of staff in the form of four booklets on the areas of Mapping, Curriculum Development and Delivery, Assessment and Evaluation, and an Introductory Guide.
- Student key skills self-assessment activities. The project has developed a system to diagnose and monitor student skill development.
- An employer survey, focussing on SMEs to identify their key skill requirements. Employers were involved at all levels of the venture, including discipline-based projects.
Key skills were embedded in the curriculum at discipline level through mapping, curriculum review and development, implementation, as well as monitoring and review.
The report draws the reader's attention to various points related to the implementation of this, and presumably other, key skills projects:
- The need for effective project management, in this case facilitated by the DfEE's requirement for quarterly reports from both the level of individual disciplinary projects and the project overall.
- The need to take into consideration different starting points for different departments in key skills development awareness and practice.
- The role of external motivational factors such as the closeness of subject review in the participating disciplines.
- The need to work supportively, persuasively and sympathetically with academics, and the need to make students aware of the usefulness of work on key skills.
- The importance of personal relationships and both formal and informal networks in implementing aspects of the project.
- The need for timely responses to requests for support from staff development officers and other staff.
- The need to be sceptical of some survey responses such as that of employers who state work-based experience is central to their needs, but who do not provide work placements within their company, and who do not have a training policy for graduate recruits.
- The importance of flexibility in curriculum design, delivery and assessment.
Project Themes:
© 2001
