Dawn Bennett
Dawn Bennett is an education consultant with over 30 years of experience in higher education leadership and research. Formerly Assistant Provost and Director of the Transformation CoLab with Bond University in Australia, Dawn's expertise is in career education and graduate employability, policy and governance, curricular reform, and change leadership. Dawn is a Senior Consultant with Outside Opinion and an Academic Board member with the Higher Education Leadership Institute and SAE Institute, where she is Deputy Chair. She is a National Senior Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow with the HEA. Dawn remains research active and continues to lead the Employ-ability Initiative.
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Comprehensive advice on careers and study pathways, delivered across the student life cycle, is essential to overcome the long-term impacts of disadvantage, a new study has found.
The report, published by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE), recommends a national commitment to developing contemporary resources for students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, as well as their careers influencers.
The research team, led by Dr Jane Coffey (Curtin University) and Professor Dawn Bennett (Bond University), developed evidence-based recommendations to effectively deliver information about higher education study options, pathways, and careers to low SES students.
“Given the changing nature of work, the impact of disadvantage is significant and long lasting, impacting opportunities for career sustainability in the long term,” Dr Coffey said.
“Engaging directly with career advisors and students from a diverse range of Australian schools and universities, we observed inequitable provision of career and study information throughout secondary education.”
While high SES students valued career information more in Year 12 and beyond, low SES students wanted guidance from Year 7 onward to allow for more informed subject selection and career-related advice.
Tertiary and secondary focus groups highlighted the impact of being assumptively streamed too early based solely on academic performance, citing a lack of quality information on the accessibility and availability of alternative post-school pathways.
“There were few ‘door openers’ but many ‘dream killers’, particularly for those from low SES, regional and remote schools,” Professor Bennett said.
“The dream killers communicated rigid and restrictive study pathways, with limited options which had a profound impact on students’ self-belief and future goals.”
The report recommends a national approach and commitment to the provision of equitable, contemporary resources for both students and career influencers, including a central information repository.
Findings also indicated qualified career practitioners be recognised as critical to the core business of schools, working in conjunction with trained educators.
Professor Bennett, noted the potential for meaningful careers advice, delivered in early high school, to positively impact long-term career outcomes.
“School students from low SES backgrounds may not have had the same exposure to careers and educational pathways as their more advantaged peers, although their aspirations are often equivalent,” Professor Bennett said.
“The recommendations from this report support the provision of timely, relevant information so all students can pursue their goals through the most appropriate pathway.”
The final report, Ameliorating disadvantage: Creating accessible, effective and equitable careers and study information for low SES students, will be available here on [date]: https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/publications/careers-study-information-low-ses-students/
This research was funded by the Australian Government Department of Education under the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) National Priorities Pool (NPP).
employability policies and practices. This work aligned with the diverse aspirations of all higher education stakeholders and fostered communication between colleagues through open dialogue. The core research question was: How is employability termed, driven, and
communicated by universities internationally?
this might mean engaging with forms of community music- making that sit outside their own cultural traditions, comfort zones, or commonly used facilitation techniques.
Engaging in these different cultural environments can also prompt these community musicians to critically reflect on, problematize, and deepen their understandings of the field of community music and its core principles.
The challenge for community music educators then becomes finding pedagogical approaches and strategies that both facilitate these sorts of intercultural learning experiences for their students, and engage with communities in culturally appropriate ways.
This chapter unpacks these challenges and possibilities, and explores how the pedagogical strategy of community service learning can facilitate these sorts of dynamic intercultural learning opportunities. Specifically, it focuses on engaging with Australian First Peoples, and draws on eight years of community service learning in this field.
in which graduate employability is becoming an important yardstick against which to measure institutional effectiveness, this questions is of fundamental importance to higher education
equity practitioners and policymakers. This study employed Commonwealth graduate outcome data to investigate relationships between disadvantage and graduate outcomes in Australia, with disadvantage defined as a graduate belonging to one or more of the following groups – low SES. Indigenous, regional, with a disability, from a non-English speaking background (NESB), born outside Australia and female in a technical area. The study provided critical insights into how access to higher education does – or does not – lead to improvements in post-graduation equity.
1. Project context
This project responded to growing social and economic demands for higher education graduates who can negotiate rapidly transforming employment contexts. It was based on the premise that higher education institutions have responsibility for helping students gain the skills, knowledge and personal attributes required of them in the initial stages of their careers. The project emerged from the understanding that despite evidence on what is required by employers, the existence of graduate attributes statements, and a large body of scholarly literature, many graduates are not optimally work ready (Fullan & Scott, 2014).
The project was implemented in parallel with two other commissioned projects on graduate employability. Recognising that the number of part-time, casual and/or multiple job-holding workers has never been higher and that traditional forms of employment are increasingly rare, this project focused on disciplines with ill-defined or difficult-to-enter graduate destinations. These included music and dance; biomedical sciences and biotechnology; professional and creative writing; and computer science. In contrast to the employer focus of the other projects, the team focused on students, graduates and academic leaders.
2. Project aims
The project aims were twofold: to increase understanding of critical issues in enhancing graduate employability in higher education; and, to identify support for educators seeking to develop student employability.
3. Project approach
The project adopted a multi-stage approach involving four overlapping core activities:
• To synthesise through a scoping review existing research on employability, its development, and impediments to its adoption within higher education;
• To investigate employability through survey and case study research with students, graduates/practitioners, higher education leaders and careers advisors;
• To showcase good practice with higher education stakeholders through a series of workshops and presentations; and
• To develop a toolkit of employability resources for educators to use with their students.
In Phase 1: Student survey and scoping review, the team designed an online student survey instrument that included items from extant data sets for comparison. The survey was distributed through academic networks and instrumentalised for delivery in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The team also prepared a comprehensive scoping review of extant literature and resources relating to students’ enhancement of employability skills, impediments to practice, and ways in which these impediments might be overcome.
In Phase 2: Case study research and resource development, the findings of Phase 1 informed four distinct case study instruments. Case studies were undertaken with students, graduates/practitioners, leaders and careers advisors. An evidence-based discussion paper synthesised the findings and identified options for improved institutional capacity. This informed a “toolkit” for which team members synthesised resources to develop employability with higher education students. The toolkit is hosted by Curtin University.
4. Project outputs
Outputs from the project included:
• Survey data from 415 students and data summaries for four institutions;
• Case study data from 60 stakeholders and 10 vignettes for the targeted disciplines;
• A website and toolkit housing resources from this project and other sources;
• An open-access conference paper;
• Industry snapshots; and
• Guides for educators.
5. Project dissemination and engagement
The team implemented a dissemination and engagement strategy that leveraged the work of this and previous employability projects. Engagement activities included 32 conference presentations, 11 workshops and 6 related papers, including presentations at national events organised by the other commissioned project teams. Half-day workshops and an expert panel were presented at two national conferences and a national forum. The website includes employability toolkit resources organised around the five themes discussed below.
6. Impact of the project (outcomes to date and projected future impact)
• More than 470 stakeholders have contributed to the project’s findings.
• To date, more than 1,500 academics, leaders and practitioners have attended presentations at university learning and teaching events and at conferences;
• 1,720 students and educators have attended in-class workshops.
• Resources trialled with 1,500 students in 2014 have been embedded into their courses.
• Four institutions have received data summaries to inform their employability initiatives.
• Industry organisations with an interest in career support and development have begun to link to and from the website and resources.
• Educators who ran the survey have adapted resources for use with their students.
• Post-project activities, including through the website, will encourage systemic adoption.
7. Key findings and recommendations
This project has enhanced understanding of graduate employability in relation to the contrasting perspectives of different stakeholders. The research confirms that to identify and develop the skills and attributes needed to navigate post-graduation pathways, higher education students need timely and informed support. Graduates assert that the lack (or under development) of these skills and attributes is one of the most critical disadvantages encountered by graduates transitioning into work.
Educators are central to the process of change, but higher education leaders, graduates and students report many educators to be ill equipped for the task. Whilst the team acknowledges the expert and impactful employability work undertaken by many colleagues, one reference group member reminded the team of a “fundamental disconnect” between the development of employability within higher education and those academics who “would say that universities are not ‘responsible’ for anything, except perhaps the pursuit of truth and beauty”. As such, the resources for educators are likely to have three audiences. The first and second of these are most likely to be interested in sharing and accessing resources. These educators became the target audience for the online toolkit:
1. Educators who agree they have a role in the development of employability, and who have the skills and resources to undertake this task;
2. Educators who agree they have a role in the development of employability, but who need some assistance to engage students and others; and
3. Educators who do not agree they have a role in the development of employability and are unlikely to engage unless required to.
The concerns expressed by students, graduates, employers and leaders related largely to academics’ lack of knowledge about the contemporary workplace; however, the case studies also revealed challenges including over-crowded curricula, modularised delivery, research-focused key performance indicators and ranking systems, an increasingly casualised workforce, and graduate destinations metrics that are insufficient for the task. Educators who attended the project’s engagement activities repeated many of these concerns. Combined, these factors highlighted the potential for a systematic approach to the development of effective employability skills. The research concluded that employability development should focus on the five themes illustrated at Figure 1:
Figure 1: Five employability themes
8. Recommendations
Employability is a critical concern for higher education and should be addressed as a matter of urgency. Recommendations are as follows:
1. That institutions embed and resource employability as a key institutional strategy, engaging the expertise of careers advisors and professionals at program and course level and developing an endorsed capacity building strategy for local leaders;
2. That all students explore and apply knowledge relating to self and career as foundational elements of their program. This should be achieved through authentic learning experiences that incorporate critical reflection and ensure that emerging capabilities are evidenced using a valid framework;
3. That program delivery reflects professional practice and that all educators be supported to become industry-aware and pedagogically proficient;
4. That higher education position itself to gather academic and learning analytics that track student behaviour and the development of employability capabilities and competencies;
5. That revisions of the Graduate Destination Survey be consultative and ensure the generation of data which is sufficiently nuanced to capture complex work arrangements, using a validated measure. In addition, that the Office for Learning and Teaching explore the ongoing collection of graduate data through agreement with the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Education and Training;
6. That the successor to the Office for Learning and Teaching establish a “linkage” program to support industry partnerships that benefit both students and educators; and
7. That higher education institutions develop post-graduation support and professional learning initiatives as an extension of their core business.
Executive summary
This report presents the findings of a 30-month project at four Australian universities, where we documented the impact of student electronic portfolio use on teaching and learning in music and other creative and performing arts. From November 2011 to April 2014, the CAPA (creative and performing arts ePortfolio project) has refined and validated ePortfolio practices to support and enhance quality learning and teaching by university staff. Various terms are used for electronic portfolios, among them, ‘e‐folio’, e-portfolio’, i-folio’, ‘i-portfolio’, web-folio’. This report uses the term ‘ePortfolio’ to cover all these terms.
Researchers from Curtin University, Griffith University, the University of Sydney, the University of Western Sydney used and evaluated ePortfolios in their teaching of music and other creative and performing arts during the 30-month period. In addition to investigating the effects of ePortfolios on students, their identity, and the enhancement of learning in a technology environment, we report the impact on teachers and their responses to teaching through the use of ePortfolios. The ways in which students’ learning and academics’ teaching respond to the use of ePortfolios differ between the universities: each has different degrees in these disciplines and different policies and uses for ePortfolio-based work.
The ePortfolio project was driven by the learning process rather than the technological tool and it is expected that the findings of this study can inform future curriculum, policy and practice for creative and performing arts students in Australian tertiary institutions. The creative application and development of an ePortfolio as a pedagogic innovation in learning and teaching in higher education lies in strategies that students acquire for selecting authentic evidence to document achievements and skills as graduates. ePortfolio development involves problem solving, decision-making, reflection, organisation, and critical thinking by students developing a learning ‘story’ that accurately represents skills learnt and competencies developed. This report documents the pedagogic and technological undertaking of ePortfolio development for creative and performing arts students and explores how student-‐artists perceive themselves, and their choice of evidence selected to showcase development; this highlights aspects of artistic identity versus professional career identity, and the ways in which these different identities are engaged during ePortfolio construction and, subsequently, when an ePortfolio is used to represent a student’s profile.
The most significant outcomes are: a community website for exchanging information about ePortfolios among the wider public (http:/www.capaeportfolios.ning.; an open-‐source website to provide practical assistance for university students and staff in designing and using ePortfolio (http:/www.eportfolioassist.com.au); national and international refereed conference presentations, refereed journal papers, and book chapters (see Appendix A); two student encounter days focusing on student-‐led presentations of their own ePortfolios and including staff professional learning sessions.
This report summarises data from the experiences of academics and students where an ePortfolio has been implemented into curriculum for creative and performing arts degree programs from November 2011 to March 2014 (Table 1). The results show that ePortfolios allow students to demonstrate their artistic capabilities, and increased their ability to plan, implement and assess their learning reflectively and to understand documentation relevant to performing arts careers. Students developed greater competencies in their educational beliefs, pedagogical skills, university generic attributes, technological expertise, and ability to address the parameters commonly used by employer groups and professional bodies.
Through exploring each institution’s experience, we found that ePortfolio creation allows students to achieve a demonstration of artistic capabilities in performance, music technology, musicology, composition and writing. We showed that students increase their ability to plan, implement and assess their learning reflectively and to understand documentation relevant to a career. An ePortfolio is a valuable tool to document students’ learning and to use this for future employment as a graduate. The literature published from the project and the case studies demonstrate an overall agreed intention to implement ePortfolio with students of music and the creative arts. ePortfolios are beneficial to students in many ways, although the approach differs at each institution. In individual subjects, ePortfolios are a tool for assessment, for encouraging student interactions, and for the collation of small, discrete tasks through which achieving the objectives of a subject can be seen from a student perspective.
The role of an ePortfolio and its use in music and other creative and performing arts areas in each of the universities is explained in chapter 1, the background, aims and methodology.
Chapter 2 sets out the approach and provides a selection of significant literature that framed the project. In chapter 3, significance and innovation, we document the data and results from both students and staff members using ePortfolios in their teaching and learning, and reveal changes to teaching and learning as a result of ePortfolio. Comments derived from semi-‐structured interviews with both students and staff members are included. The results of the project indicate how teaching in music and other creative and performing arts can benefit from the incorporation of ePortfolios into tertiary teaching and learning. The conclusory chapter 4 describes how the use of ePortfolios relates to changes in assessment procedures by staff, of how it demonstrates the longitudinal nature of study in music and other creative and performing arts, the ability of ePortfolios to provide holistic views of university learning, and the significance to staff and students of ePortfolios as representations of the multiple identities that music students develop during their studies.
Our recommendations are that successful implementation of ePortfolios involve:
1. Investigating and selecting appropriate platforms for specific discipline areas, rather than adopting generic platforms.
2. Training both students and staff.
3. Modelling their use by staff so that students see their uses, relevance and potential.
4. Integrating then into the curriculum, taking into consideration their ability to change styles of learning and teaching.
5. Using them appropriately as an assessment tool.
6. Developing and communicating clear justifications for their use and explanations of their application.
7. Support by universities at policy and implementation levels.
8. The potential for ongoing access to and use after students have graduated.
The outcomes are listed at the end of the final chapter and can also be found on the project website at http://capaeportfolios.ning.com/
Comprehensive advice on careers and study pathways, delivered across the student life cycle, is essential to overcome the long-term impacts of disadvantage, a new study has found.
The report, published by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE), recommends a national commitment to developing contemporary resources for students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, as well as their careers influencers.
The research team, led by Dr Jane Coffey (Curtin University) and Professor Dawn Bennett (Bond University), developed evidence-based recommendations to effectively deliver information about higher education study options, pathways, and careers to low SES students.
“Given the changing nature of work, the impact of disadvantage is significant and long lasting, impacting opportunities for career sustainability in the long term,” Dr Coffey said.
“Engaging directly with career advisors and students from a diverse range of Australian schools and universities, we observed inequitable provision of career and study information throughout secondary education.”
While high SES students valued career information more in Year 12 and beyond, low SES students wanted guidance from Year 7 onward to allow for more informed subject selection and career-related advice.
Tertiary and secondary focus groups highlighted the impact of being assumptively streamed too early based solely on academic performance, citing a lack of quality information on the accessibility and availability of alternative post-school pathways.
“There were few ‘door openers’ but many ‘dream killers’, particularly for those from low SES, regional and remote schools,” Professor Bennett said.
“The dream killers communicated rigid and restrictive study pathways, with limited options which had a profound impact on students’ self-belief and future goals.”
The report recommends a national approach and commitment to the provision of equitable, contemporary resources for both students and career influencers, including a central information repository.
Findings also indicated qualified career practitioners be recognised as critical to the core business of schools, working in conjunction with trained educators.
Professor Bennett, noted the potential for meaningful careers advice, delivered in early high school, to positively impact long-term career outcomes.
“School students from low SES backgrounds may not have had the same exposure to careers and educational pathways as their more advantaged peers, although their aspirations are often equivalent,” Professor Bennett said.
“The recommendations from this report support the provision of timely, relevant information so all students can pursue their goals through the most appropriate pathway.”
The final report, Ameliorating disadvantage: Creating accessible, effective and equitable careers and study information for low SES students, will be available here on [date]: https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/publications/careers-study-information-low-ses-students/
This research was funded by the Australian Government Department of Education under the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) National Priorities Pool (NPP).
employability policies and practices. This work aligned with the diverse aspirations of all higher education stakeholders and fostered communication between colleagues through open dialogue. The core research question was: How is employability termed, driven, and
communicated by universities internationally?
this might mean engaging with forms of community music- making that sit outside their own cultural traditions, comfort zones, or commonly used facilitation techniques.
Engaging in these different cultural environments can also prompt these community musicians to critically reflect on, problematize, and deepen their understandings of the field of community music and its core principles.
The challenge for community music educators then becomes finding pedagogical approaches and strategies that both facilitate these sorts of intercultural learning experiences for their students, and engage with communities in culturally appropriate ways.
This chapter unpacks these challenges and possibilities, and explores how the pedagogical strategy of community service learning can facilitate these sorts of dynamic intercultural learning opportunities. Specifically, it focuses on engaging with Australian First Peoples, and draws on eight years of community service learning in this field.
in which graduate employability is becoming an important yardstick against which to measure institutional effectiveness, this questions is of fundamental importance to higher education
equity practitioners and policymakers. This study employed Commonwealth graduate outcome data to investigate relationships between disadvantage and graduate outcomes in Australia, with disadvantage defined as a graduate belonging to one or more of the following groups – low SES. Indigenous, regional, with a disability, from a non-English speaking background (NESB), born outside Australia and female in a technical area. The study provided critical insights into how access to higher education does – or does not – lead to improvements in post-graduation equity.
1. Project context
This project responded to growing social and economic demands for higher education graduates who can negotiate rapidly transforming employment contexts. It was based on the premise that higher education institutions have responsibility for helping students gain the skills, knowledge and personal attributes required of them in the initial stages of their careers. The project emerged from the understanding that despite evidence on what is required by employers, the existence of graduate attributes statements, and a large body of scholarly literature, many graduates are not optimally work ready (Fullan & Scott, 2014).
The project was implemented in parallel with two other commissioned projects on graduate employability. Recognising that the number of part-time, casual and/or multiple job-holding workers has never been higher and that traditional forms of employment are increasingly rare, this project focused on disciplines with ill-defined or difficult-to-enter graduate destinations. These included music and dance; biomedical sciences and biotechnology; professional and creative writing; and computer science. In contrast to the employer focus of the other projects, the team focused on students, graduates and academic leaders.
2. Project aims
The project aims were twofold: to increase understanding of critical issues in enhancing graduate employability in higher education; and, to identify support for educators seeking to develop student employability.
3. Project approach
The project adopted a multi-stage approach involving four overlapping core activities:
• To synthesise through a scoping review existing research on employability, its development, and impediments to its adoption within higher education;
• To investigate employability through survey and case study research with students, graduates/practitioners, higher education leaders and careers advisors;
• To showcase good practice with higher education stakeholders through a series of workshops and presentations; and
• To develop a toolkit of employability resources for educators to use with their students.
In Phase 1: Student survey and scoping review, the team designed an online student survey instrument that included items from extant data sets for comparison. The survey was distributed through academic networks and instrumentalised for delivery in English, Spanish and Portuguese. The team also prepared a comprehensive scoping review of extant literature and resources relating to students’ enhancement of employability skills, impediments to practice, and ways in which these impediments might be overcome.
In Phase 2: Case study research and resource development, the findings of Phase 1 informed four distinct case study instruments. Case studies were undertaken with students, graduates/practitioners, leaders and careers advisors. An evidence-based discussion paper synthesised the findings and identified options for improved institutional capacity. This informed a “toolkit” for which team members synthesised resources to develop employability with higher education students. The toolkit is hosted by Curtin University.
4. Project outputs
Outputs from the project included:
• Survey data from 415 students and data summaries for four institutions;
• Case study data from 60 stakeholders and 10 vignettes for the targeted disciplines;
• A website and toolkit housing resources from this project and other sources;
• An open-access conference paper;
• Industry snapshots; and
• Guides for educators.
5. Project dissemination and engagement
The team implemented a dissemination and engagement strategy that leveraged the work of this and previous employability projects. Engagement activities included 32 conference presentations, 11 workshops and 6 related papers, including presentations at national events organised by the other commissioned project teams. Half-day workshops and an expert panel were presented at two national conferences and a national forum. The website includes employability toolkit resources organised around the five themes discussed below.
6. Impact of the project (outcomes to date and projected future impact)
• More than 470 stakeholders have contributed to the project’s findings.
• To date, more than 1,500 academics, leaders and practitioners have attended presentations at university learning and teaching events and at conferences;
• 1,720 students and educators have attended in-class workshops.
• Resources trialled with 1,500 students in 2014 have been embedded into their courses.
• Four institutions have received data summaries to inform their employability initiatives.
• Industry organisations with an interest in career support and development have begun to link to and from the website and resources.
• Educators who ran the survey have adapted resources for use with their students.
• Post-project activities, including through the website, will encourage systemic adoption.
7. Key findings and recommendations
This project has enhanced understanding of graduate employability in relation to the contrasting perspectives of different stakeholders. The research confirms that to identify and develop the skills and attributes needed to navigate post-graduation pathways, higher education students need timely and informed support. Graduates assert that the lack (or under development) of these skills and attributes is one of the most critical disadvantages encountered by graduates transitioning into work.
Educators are central to the process of change, but higher education leaders, graduates and students report many educators to be ill equipped for the task. Whilst the team acknowledges the expert and impactful employability work undertaken by many colleagues, one reference group member reminded the team of a “fundamental disconnect” between the development of employability within higher education and those academics who “would say that universities are not ‘responsible’ for anything, except perhaps the pursuit of truth and beauty”. As such, the resources for educators are likely to have three audiences. The first and second of these are most likely to be interested in sharing and accessing resources. These educators became the target audience for the online toolkit:
1. Educators who agree they have a role in the development of employability, and who have the skills and resources to undertake this task;
2. Educators who agree they have a role in the development of employability, but who need some assistance to engage students and others; and
3. Educators who do not agree they have a role in the development of employability and are unlikely to engage unless required to.
The concerns expressed by students, graduates, employers and leaders related largely to academics’ lack of knowledge about the contemporary workplace; however, the case studies also revealed challenges including over-crowded curricula, modularised delivery, research-focused key performance indicators and ranking systems, an increasingly casualised workforce, and graduate destinations metrics that are insufficient for the task. Educators who attended the project’s engagement activities repeated many of these concerns. Combined, these factors highlighted the potential for a systematic approach to the development of effective employability skills. The research concluded that employability development should focus on the five themes illustrated at Figure 1:
Figure 1: Five employability themes
8. Recommendations
Employability is a critical concern for higher education and should be addressed as a matter of urgency. Recommendations are as follows:
1. That institutions embed and resource employability as a key institutional strategy, engaging the expertise of careers advisors and professionals at program and course level and developing an endorsed capacity building strategy for local leaders;
2. That all students explore and apply knowledge relating to self and career as foundational elements of their program. This should be achieved through authentic learning experiences that incorporate critical reflection and ensure that emerging capabilities are evidenced using a valid framework;
3. That program delivery reflects professional practice and that all educators be supported to become industry-aware and pedagogically proficient;
4. That higher education position itself to gather academic and learning analytics that track student behaviour and the development of employability capabilities and competencies;
5. That revisions of the Graduate Destination Survey be consultative and ensure the generation of data which is sufficiently nuanced to capture complex work arrangements, using a validated measure. In addition, that the Office for Learning and Teaching explore the ongoing collection of graduate data through agreement with the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Education and Training;
6. That the successor to the Office for Learning and Teaching establish a “linkage” program to support industry partnerships that benefit both students and educators; and
7. That higher education institutions develop post-graduation support and professional learning initiatives as an extension of their core business.
Executive summary
This report presents the findings of a 30-month project at four Australian universities, where we documented the impact of student electronic portfolio use on teaching and learning in music and other creative and performing arts. From November 2011 to April 2014, the CAPA (creative and performing arts ePortfolio project) has refined and validated ePortfolio practices to support and enhance quality learning and teaching by university staff. Various terms are used for electronic portfolios, among them, ‘e‐folio’, e-portfolio’, i-folio’, ‘i-portfolio’, web-folio’. This report uses the term ‘ePortfolio’ to cover all these terms.
Researchers from Curtin University, Griffith University, the University of Sydney, the University of Western Sydney used and evaluated ePortfolios in their teaching of music and other creative and performing arts during the 30-month period. In addition to investigating the effects of ePortfolios on students, their identity, and the enhancement of learning in a technology environment, we report the impact on teachers and their responses to teaching through the use of ePortfolios. The ways in which students’ learning and academics’ teaching respond to the use of ePortfolios differ between the universities: each has different degrees in these disciplines and different policies and uses for ePortfolio-based work.
The ePortfolio project was driven by the learning process rather than the technological tool and it is expected that the findings of this study can inform future curriculum, policy and practice for creative and performing arts students in Australian tertiary institutions. The creative application and development of an ePortfolio as a pedagogic innovation in learning and teaching in higher education lies in strategies that students acquire for selecting authentic evidence to document achievements and skills as graduates. ePortfolio development involves problem solving, decision-making, reflection, organisation, and critical thinking by students developing a learning ‘story’ that accurately represents skills learnt and competencies developed. This report documents the pedagogic and technological undertaking of ePortfolio development for creative and performing arts students and explores how student-‐artists perceive themselves, and their choice of evidence selected to showcase development; this highlights aspects of artistic identity versus professional career identity, and the ways in which these different identities are engaged during ePortfolio construction and, subsequently, when an ePortfolio is used to represent a student’s profile.
The most significant outcomes are: a community website for exchanging information about ePortfolios among the wider public (http:/www.capaeportfolios.ning.; an open-‐source website to provide practical assistance for university students and staff in designing and using ePortfolio (http:/www.eportfolioassist.com.au); national and international refereed conference presentations, refereed journal papers, and book chapters (see Appendix A); two student encounter days focusing on student-‐led presentations of their own ePortfolios and including staff professional learning sessions.
This report summarises data from the experiences of academics and students where an ePortfolio has been implemented into curriculum for creative and performing arts degree programs from November 2011 to March 2014 (Table 1). The results show that ePortfolios allow students to demonstrate their artistic capabilities, and increased their ability to plan, implement and assess their learning reflectively and to understand documentation relevant to performing arts careers. Students developed greater competencies in their educational beliefs, pedagogical skills, university generic attributes, technological expertise, and ability to address the parameters commonly used by employer groups and professional bodies.
Through exploring each institution’s experience, we found that ePortfolio creation allows students to achieve a demonstration of artistic capabilities in performance, music technology, musicology, composition and writing. We showed that students increase their ability to plan, implement and assess their learning reflectively and to understand documentation relevant to a career. An ePortfolio is a valuable tool to document students’ learning and to use this for future employment as a graduate. The literature published from the project and the case studies demonstrate an overall agreed intention to implement ePortfolio with students of music and the creative arts. ePortfolios are beneficial to students in many ways, although the approach differs at each institution. In individual subjects, ePortfolios are a tool for assessment, for encouraging student interactions, and for the collation of small, discrete tasks through which achieving the objectives of a subject can be seen from a student perspective.
The role of an ePortfolio and its use in music and other creative and performing arts areas in each of the universities is explained in chapter 1, the background, aims and methodology.
Chapter 2 sets out the approach and provides a selection of significant literature that framed the project. In chapter 3, significance and innovation, we document the data and results from both students and staff members using ePortfolios in their teaching and learning, and reveal changes to teaching and learning as a result of ePortfolio. Comments derived from semi-‐structured interviews with both students and staff members are included. The results of the project indicate how teaching in music and other creative and performing arts can benefit from the incorporation of ePortfolios into tertiary teaching and learning. The conclusory chapter 4 describes how the use of ePortfolios relates to changes in assessment procedures by staff, of how it demonstrates the longitudinal nature of study in music and other creative and performing arts, the ability of ePortfolios to provide holistic views of university learning, and the significance to staff and students of ePortfolios as representations of the multiple identities that music students develop during their studies.
Our recommendations are that successful implementation of ePortfolios involve:
1. Investigating and selecting appropriate platforms for specific discipline areas, rather than adopting generic platforms.
2. Training both students and staff.
3. Modelling their use by staff so that students see their uses, relevance and potential.
4. Integrating then into the curriculum, taking into consideration their ability to change styles of learning and teaching.
5. Using them appropriately as an assessment tool.
6. Developing and communicating clear justifications for their use and explanations of their application.
7. Support by universities at policy and implementation levels.
8. The potential for ongoing access to and use after students have graduated.
The outcomes are listed at the end of the final chapter and can also be found on the project website at http://capaeportfolios.ning.com/
Karen Burland and I have just started a Twitter conversation about performance careers. Please respond by using #PerformanceCareer, or message us directly.
Our questions are:
What does a performance career look like?
How is it sustained?
What else does it involve?
We would love your help!
It follows that the employability rhetoric has to shift from “getting a job” (preferably within four months of graduation) to having the
requisite skills to obtain or create work over time. This short article highlights three of the reasons this is both complex and challenging.
Although engineering employability receives significant attention both nationally and internationally, there is little agreement about how employability should be defined or how it might be developed through an integrated approach. Definitions aside, student engineers need to prepare for careers that are increasingly unstable, mobile and self-directed. In the
current climate, employability in engineering can no longer be defined as a job: it does not come with the graduation certificate or with accreditation and it requires constant work throughout the career lifecycle.
PURPOSE
This study positioned employability development as the cognitive and social development of student engineers as capable and informed individuals, professionals and social citizens. The study located employability development within the existing curriculum and sought to
engage students as partners in their developmental journeys by creating a better understanding of students’ thinking as student engineers.
APPROACH
The study employed a new measure of self and career literacy to develop personalised engineering profiles with 255 first-year engineering students. Students self-assessed their employability development using an online tool. Using the same process, educators will draw on students’ self-assessments to rethink the design and delivery of initial engineering
education, including composite forms of work-integrated-learning.
RESULTS
Early results indicate the value of a metacognitive approach to employability development. The measure revealed students’ perceptions of their development as engineers. The inclusion of ‘self’ alongside ‘career’ revealed new insights on ‘basic’ career literacy, with students emphasising the need for high-level communication skills and a desire for work that
has meaning and impact.
CONCLUSIONS
Employability development is a career-long concern in which higher education plays an intensive early role. Involving students in this process from the first year of studies has the potential for students to realise their individual roles as partners in the developmental process. The findings illustrate that the successful integration of engineering theory and
practice requires students to become agentic partners in their personal development. For this to occur, educators need to understand students’ perceived weaknesses and strengths, and areas in which they might be over-confident. The study reaffirms that it is insufficient for students to know how to think; they need a critical awareness and understanding of their thinking and learning processes. It is imperative, then, that metacognition forms the basis of an integrated engineering education.
This career story comes from a computer science graduate who completed an Honours degree in artificial intelligence. The account is a great resource for understanding uneasiness about future work. When reading the career story, students should reflect on what they have learned in their degree programs and how they might use employABILITY thinking to adapt this to new working environments.
At the back of the resource, you will find more information as well as sample questions on learning from biographies and career stories.
We have also developed an educator guide on how to use career stories with students. https://developingemployability.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Career-story_Educator.pdf
If you have other career stories to share, please let us know.
Career story – Adapting to change is most effective if students have first created a personalised employability profile as part of the Developing EmployABILITY process. EmployABILITY resources are free and all members of the Developing Emplo… Read more
Career-story-Adapting-to-change_S
tudent.pdf
The resources work well as a reflection on strengths at the start of a new semester. They can generate the initial content of a profile, ePortfolio or website, motivating students to drive their development through new opportunities on or off campus.
My motivation to feature the resources came from a workshop with final-year students at which one mature student remarked she had been a "stay-at-home" mum and had nothing to put on her CV. It took other students to point out the employability strengths in raising 3 children whilst studying full time, not to mention volunteering at everything from netball to school committees. We were reminded of the need to gently and persistently encourage students to articulate their strengths and areas of need.
If you have similar resources or examples, please let us know!
Dawn
Volunteer challenge: https://developingemployability.edu.au/featured-resource-volunteer-challenge/
How much do you know already? https://developingemployability.edu.au/tools/skills-audit-much-know-already/
If you have other career stories to share, please let us know! Accomplishing your goals is most effective if students have first created a personalised employability profile as part of the 10-step Developing EmployABILITY process.
There is no charge for any employABILITY resources and all members of the Developing EmployABILITY community have access to them.To become a member please register here. To learn more about the Developing EmployABILITY process, join the conversation at our Community of Practice on LinkedIn or visit the site at https://developingemployability.edu.au/
of continuing professional development. It is important to establish how new graduates can strengthen their identities as entrepreneurial and reflective professionals. One of the most powerful ways of illustrating this is with the narratives of professionals with diverse career paths.