Introducing the learner-earner journey and bridging the digital skills gap: Graduate and employer viewpoints

Authors

Collaborative Enhancement Project Team

The project team led by Northumbria University in partnership with Abertay University, Cardiff University, London Metropolitan University, Ulster University, University of Bath, University of Huddersfield and University of York were thrilled to secure one of the prestigious QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Projects. This significant initiative, which launched in early 2024, aims to explore the pressing issue of the digital skills gap.

There is a worldwide skills gap between employer expectations and graduate attainment from the UK (Davenport, Crick and Hourizi (2020)), the USA (CC2020 Task Force (2020)), India (Packer (2024)), Turkey (Akdur (2022)), Bangladesh (Hussain (2022)), etc. This skills gap can be seen in higher-than-ideal graduate unemployment and underemployment. Issues with work readiness and a mismatch between the competencies desired by employers and those evidenced by some graduates is also frequently reported. As a result, there is a push from students, universities and regulatory bodies (including the Office for Students) to proactively work to eliminate this skills gap.

The scope of our project is to address both aspects of the gap via an exploration of Graduate and Employer Viewpoints. Firstly, we are exploring how graduates obtain professional employment. Secondly, we are examining how well the competencies gained via degree study align with those required in employment. The final output from the project will be a series of case studies demonstrating methods that positively support the learner-earner journey alongside related good practice suggestions that will provide insights into current practices, challenges and improvement opportunities for the universities involved in the study and the wider sector.

Project Team

The project team includes universities from all four nations in the United Kingdom. It represents a diverse range of universities, including Russell Group and modern universities, research-intensive providers and some that adopt a more teaching-intensive orientation. The team includes colleagues at a wide range of career stages also and is delighted to involve four National Teaching Fellows and five Principal Fellows of the HEA. While this richness of diversity and experience might make collaboration more complex at times, we firmly believe that it will only strengthen the quality of our outputs. We are employing the computing discipline as the sample for our case studies; however, we anticipate that the research approach and resulting outcomes will be transferable to other disciplines as well.

Project Approach

We will run two workshops at each participating university: one to explore Graduate Views and one to explore Employer Views. The workshops will be in two parts, matching the two key challenges of the skills gaps: obtaining employment and work readiness once in employment.

Viewpoints on obtaining employment

In the first part of the workshop, we will explore an idealized learner-earner journey that best supports graduates in obtaining professional work. This part of the workshop is intentionally playful (Whitton (2018)) to function as an introduction and trust-building activity to help positively frame the workshops and to encourage participants to imagine ideas outside the "real world" safely, promoting new ideas and innovative solutions. We achieve this via ‘Futurespectives’, in which small groups will place themselves in the future, imagining a reduced skills gap and "looking back" to gain insight into how to get there.

The workshops use the catapult futurespective in which small groups will apply the metaphor of graduate progression as a giant human catapult (the degree programme), which shoots the Graduate over the Capability-Competency Chasm (Ward et al. (2021)) (which presents challenges and risks), with in-air support (help to overcome challenges), to land in nirvana (beneficial employment). Find out more in this video.

Viewpoints on graduates' competencies

In the second part of the workshop, we will explore the skills gap between the competencies graduates evidence and the competencies professional work demands. We will examine competencies in relation to Skills for the Information Age (SFIA) skills and conduct a gap analysis of what recent graduates' evidence and employers desire. This evaluation will include the exploration of skills and behaviour factors, for example, if a graduate requires competency in programming/software development which skill level do graduates evidence, and which level is desired? In what areas do graduates excel and which do they require further development (together with illustrative examples)? For instance, regarding behavioural factors and collaboration more specifically, what level is evidenced by graduates, and which level is desired? In what areas do graduates excel and which do they require further development (together with illustrative examples)?

Workshop participants will complete these tasks in small groups organized around SFIA role families, e.g., Software Engineering, Information and Cyber Security, Business Analysis, Technology infrastructure platform role, Application Support Practitioner etc.

The opportunity and the future

One of the key attractions of the QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project was its role as a catalyst to explore an area from which all project partners and the wider community can benefit. We hope that sharing our learning throughout the project lifecycle will be helpful. We look forward to sharing the workshop's initial outcomes and some of our research and practice findings, and to seeing how these perspectives will enrich our work and hope they enrich yours, too.

References

• D Akdur. Analysis of Software Engineering Skills Gap in the Industry. ACM Trans. Comp. Educ. 23, 1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1145/3567837
• CC2020 Task Force. Computing Curricula 2020: Paradigms for Future
• Computing Curricula. Technical Report. ACM/IEEE/IEEE Computer Society. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1145/3467967
• J. H. Davenport, T. Crick and R. Hourizi, "The Institute of Coding: A University-Industry Collaboration to Address the UK's Digital Skills Crisis," 2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Porto, Portugal, 2020, pp. 1400-1408, https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON45650.2020.9125272
• M Hossain. Human Capital, Labor Market Outcomes, and Skills Gap in the ICT Sector. In Digital Transformation and Economic Development in Bangladesh: Rethinking Digitalization Strategies for Leapfrogging. 2022. 171–194
• H Packer. Graduate unemployment emerges as Indian election issue. Time Higher Education. 2024. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/graduate-unemployment-emerges-indian-election-issue
• R. Ward, O. Phillips, D. Bowers, T. Crick, J H. Davenport, P Hanna, A. Hayes, A. Irons, and T. Prickett. 2021. Towards a 21st Century Personalised Learning Skills Taxonomy. In 2021 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON). 344–354. https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON46332.2021.9453883
• N Whitton. 2018. Playful learning: tools, techniques, and tactics. Research in Learning Technology 26 (2018). https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2035