THE RESEARCH ISSUE
enhancing the student experience LINKING DISSERTATIONS TO ATTRIBUTE DEVELOPMENT Dr Vanessa Armstrong, Academic Lead for Employability in the School of Biomedical, Nutritional and Sports Sciences at Newcastle University, discusses a study to investigate whether students can identify, understand and articulate the skills developed through their dissertation. The research also highlights the importance and potential impact of working with students as partners in employability research.
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PHOENIX JUNE 2020
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ewcastle University’s Graduate Framework was established in 2006 and re-launched in 2019 following a substantive review. The framework is based around 10 core attributes and behaviours: curious, collaborative, engaged, socially responsible, resilient, critical thinkers, confident, creative, innovative and enterprising, and digitally capable. Employers report graduate skills gaps in many of these areas, particularly resilience, problem solving and communication, as highlighted in The Global Skills Gap report (2019). The dissertation is widely recognised as a key academic component of a degree where students develop many skills and attributes. Here at Newcastle, experiences of academic staff supervising dissertation students indicated that whilst they could see students’ development in many areas of the framework, students themselves were often unaware of this, or unable to articulate it.
RESEARCH APPROACH Following ethical approval, we conducted two final year student surveys, with two different cohorts: one in May (post dissertation) and another in October 2019 (pre-dissertation). We used OMBEA for anonymous data collection during lectures, with approximately 100 students taking part in each survey (around one third of the total cohort). Our aim was to determine students’ expectations for, and reported benefits of, the dissertation project for employability and future plans.
PARTICIPANTS IDENTIFIED THAT THE DISSERTATION HAD HELPED THEM
DEVELOP SEVERAL ATTRIBUTES
INCLUDING CRITICAL THINKING, CONFIDENCE AND COLLABORATION
