Raising Student Awareness of Employability Through Multiple Curriculum Adjustments at the Module Level

DB125 You and Your Money replaced DB123 from October 2018J. Although there are some differences in content (some increase in economics content and more global orientation), essentially the two modules are very similar in that they use personal finance as a lens for introducing students to the social sciences. However, a major difference is that DB125 uses multiple methods aimed at raising students’ awareness of employability. These methods are: 

• Interactive module map in Week 1 that includes a tab specifically about employability. 
• Section in Week 1 introducing what is meant by Employability and PDP. 
• Assessment. Every TMA and the EMA awards 10% of marks for self-reflection that focuses on employability related issues that have been scaffolded in the module materials: 

o TMA01. Reflection on how to use tutor effectively following on from PaSS-type call from tutor in early weeks where goals and concerns will be discussed in effect laying foundation for PDP. 
o TMA02. Reflection on team-working following on from participation in a collaborative activity, taking the form of how the benefits and challenges of team-working would be articulated to a prospective employer. 
o TMA03. Using PDP process to formalise a goal, strengths, constraints and intended actions, following on from PDP activity embedded in the VLE materials. 
o EMA. Reflection on how a selected skill (financial, study or employability) has progressed since starting the module, following on from a skills quiz covering all three areas embedded in the VLE materials. 

• AL briefing and support specifically included a session on how to support employability, how to feed back/feed forward on the employability sections of assessment and recognising the perimeter at which to hand off students to the OU Careers and Employability service. A member of CES took part in this briefing. 

In an ideal world, evaluation research would measure the ultimate desired outcomes directly – for example, did the DB125 students go on to perform better in job interviews, achieve more highly against career and personal aspirations, and so on? In practice, in a project such as this, the ultimate outcomes cannot readily be measured. Therefore, a theory of change approach was adopted which deduced a logical sequence from study of DB125 to the ultimate outcomes and identified the associated intermediate measurements that could be used for evaluation. 

A mixed-methods approach was adopted using three strands of research: bespoke VLE analytics to measure student engagement; AL survey to glean tutor perceptions of students’ awareness and articulation of employability: SEaM survey to measure student awareness of employability comparing DB125 (2018J) with DB123 (2017J). All three strands, in particular the SEaM surveys, support the conclusion that the embedded resources have been successful in raising student awareness of employability.