Universities and colleges need to prepare their students for a new world of work. Workplaces are becoming more collaborative, data-driven and agile. Employers are looking for staff who are flexible and have soft skills such as problem-solving and team working.
Educational institutions are increasingly looking to embed these new ways of working into their curriculums, to give graduates a head start in the jobs market.
“Organisations are having to become more agile and rapid in the way they design, develop and deliver new products and services,” says Andy Powell, cloud chief technology officer at Jisc, which promotes the use of digital technology in higher and further education. “Clearly, universities have a role to play in readying students for that new kind of workplace,” he says.
Higher and further education institutions are in the early stages of modernising their approach to studying as they look to equip students with the tools needed to thrive in the modern workplace.
At TEDI-London, a new university of engineering that opens to undergraduates in 2021, learning will be turned on its head.
There will be no lectures and students will pursue their own coursework using an online service called a learning tree. They will connect with subject experts for any queries, but the onus will be on the students to work collaboratively to drive their learning.
The traditional academic programme is being reimagined at the university – a collaboration between King’s College London, UNSW Sydney and Arizona State University – in its quest to turn out a new type of engineering graduate.
“There’s a particular shortage of engineers who have broad skills, who can integrate and who are socially aware. So what we’re trying to do is develop that type of graduate,” says TEDI-London dean and CEO Judy Raper.
“We believe that pedagogy will influence how professionals get those essential skills, such as teamwork, leadership, collaboration and being aware of society and how it behaves. And so we’ve turned the pedagogy upside down,” she says.
Students will learn primarily through designing and making products rather than theoretically. The campus is based at London’s Canada Water and students will build products to help the area’s goal of becoming a tech-enabled smart city.
TEDI-London’s revolutionary approach is a response to the demands of industry, where employers are seeking graduates who can quickly fit into the new ways of working, she says.
Employers are particularly concerned about a lack of relevant skills and experience among new employees. Only 18% of executives interviewed in a survey by Deloitte thought that UK school leavers and graduates have the right digital skills.
In light of this, universities are giving students experience of using the latest workplace collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Google G Suite, Slack and Zoom. These are being widely adopted in workplaces. They allow staff to collaborate on documents and files in real time and hold virtual meetings through video conferencing. Microsoft Teams – which is free for students – is being introduced into many colleges as a tool to allow groups of students to collaborate on tasks from different locations.
“Microsoft Teams is a gamechanger for us,” says Vicky Gosling, head of digital experience at Falmouth University, which runs specialist courses for the creative industries. A pilot scheme is running in the university’s games academy, using Microsoft Teams to bring students together to work on designing computer games. The Teams software will be introduced more widely across the university’s courses in September.
Meanwhile, a pioneering approach to learning is being taken at the University of the West of England’s faculty of business and law in Bristol. Its £55m state-of-the-art building that opened in 2017 aims to showcase the types of work settings students will encounter once they graduate. The building includes social and learning spaces that allow staff, students and business people to work together.
The centre has a number of technology-enabled active learning (Teal) classrooms. These have a screen at the front of the room and six desks around its edges, each with a connected computer so students can work in groups then showcase their work to those on other tables via the main screen.
On entering the building, there is a ground-floor cafe and an atrium that shows off the professional workspaces on the centre’s seven floors. There’s a Bloomberg financial trading room, showcase law courts where students can act out court cases and a team entrepreneurship space where students set up and run their own businesses. This is one of the standout examples of how colleges are preparing students for the workplace of today.
However, the most critical factor for success in today’s workplaces are the people, says John Sumpter, a subject specialist in digital leadership for Jisc. He adds: “It’s about working collaboratively with others and adapting your working approach as processes change and culture shifts. Technology simply enables people to achieve their desired outcomes more effectively. For higher education to ensure graduates are ready and able for this modern workplace, clear strategy from senior staff to support and develop teaching practice needs to be in place.”
Sarah Knight, Jisc’s head of data and digital capability, says there is a long way to go before authentic opportunities for students to experience the workplace environment become embedded in further and higher education. This must change, she argues.
“Digital is no longer an optional add to education. If we are looking to succeed and maintain our place in the global workforce, we really need to be ensuring that graduates and those leaving education have got the necessary skills to live, learn and work in a digital society.
“Our 2019 digital experience insights survey of 29,531 students shows that only 42% of higher education students feel their course prepares them for the digital workplace,” she says.
Today’s graduates pay high fees for advanced study and want to be reassured that they can fit seamlessly into the jobs market once they leave university.
Education must prepare them for modern working. Students and employers expect nothing less.
Find out about Education 4.0, Jisc’s response to predicted changes in the way students learn as a result of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and mixed reality
