Data, Data Everywhere but what do students think? Evidencing employability in careers provision through quality assurance and student voice

Lydia Lauder and Dr Victoria Crowe, The Open University, UK 

Emails: Lydia.lauder@open.ac.uk; Victoria.crowe@open.ac.uk     

Click to download Data, Data Everywhere but what do students think? Evidencing employability in careers provision through quality assurance and student voice (.pptx)

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Abstract

Higher education careers providers are facing unprecedented demands to demonstrate value for money, with pressures heightened by the post-pandemic climate.  Traditionally, they have been driven by economistic rationale, scientific paradigms, and narrow conceptualisations of ‘employability’.  These parameters do not adequately capture the full impact of careers guidance. 

At the OU’s Careers and Employability Services (CES) we have adopted more holistic impact assessment to determine the effects of our provision upon students and alumni.  In this talk we will outline our evaluative practice at CES and how we have used our newly developed impact assessment framework which places the student and alumni voice at its centre, within timely, robust, and low burden evaluation methodologies.  We will highlight some of the practical tools we have developed to support evaluation of our extensive online provision.  These involve drawing a upon variety of data techniques and gathering evidence from a range of stakeholders, notably practitioners and service users.    Holistic evaluation and quality assurance mechanisms hold compelling scope for generating multilevel evidence, more reflective of the complex realities of students’ employability.  We thus offer a challenge to the charge that often services are ‘data rich but insights poor’ and instead ‘as students think, we do’.