Intercultural Communicative Competence and Employability in the Languages Curriculum at the Open University UK

In recent years, higher education in Great Britain has undergone considerable change, most markedly the increase in fees from about £9,000 for a BA degree to £27,000 in 2012 in England. This fee increase has led to more questioning of the benefits of university education and a stronger focus on whether the students' financing of their education achieves a return on investment. The increased earning over a life time are estimated to range from £100,000 to £500,000 (Anderson) and, as repaying their student debt has become a major preoccupation for new graduates, employability has become a key theme in university publicity: "Enhance your employability" is a key message given to prospective students by the most popular degree course at the Open University, an open and distance higher education provider in the UK, ranked 14th overall in a national league table for the employability of its graduates. Research (for example Araújo et al.) has demonstrated that knowledge of a second language increases employability across Europe. The importance of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) for working in multicultural teams is widely acknowledged and recognised by employers (CBI 32,39) and so is intercultural dialogue for social cohesion (CoE, White Paper 5). Degrees in modern languages, especially when they integrate the development of ICC, therefore present strong employability benefits. This paper presents the approach the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University in the UK has taken to integrate both employability and ICC skills in its curriculum and enhance the skills base of graduates and their chances of finding work in the national or international graduate workforce. We will describe the design principles and development of our detailed framework and supporting resource - designed to span our entire modern languages programme, in five languages, from ab initio to degree level - and demonstrate how our innovative learning design implements the framework and supports the training of highly employable multilingual global citizens able to articulate the range of skills they have developed

Every student counts: promoting numeracy and enhancing employability

This three-year project investigated factors that influence the development of undergraduates’ numeracy skills, with a view to identifying ways to improve them and thereby enhance student employability. Its aims and objectives were to ascertain: the generic numeracy skills in which employers expect their graduate recruits to be competent and the extent to which employers are using numeracy tests as part of graduate recruitment processes; the numeracy skills developed within a diversity of academic disciplines; the prevalence of factors that influence undergraduates’ development of their numeracy skills; how the development of numeracy skills might be better supported within undergraduate curricula; and the extra-curricular support necessary to enhance undergraduates’ numeracy skills

Bridging the cultural divide: the emergence of Global Language Programs at Boston University

As the fourth largest private research institution in the United States Boston University (BU) serves more than 18,000 students, and approximately seven percent study a second language. Since 2007, when the President unveiled his Strategic Plan, the overall scope and diversity of foreign language instruction across campus and through BU’s Office of International Programs has increased dramatically. He is clearly fulfilling his mandate to strengthen the quality of the faculty, strive for excellence in undergraduate education, emphasize interdisciplinary studies, and deepen connections to the city of Boston and the world.1 The unveiling of his plan coincided with the arrival of a new Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) who recognized that BU’s assets in languages could be developed into a signature strength of the College, and made a special commitment to nurturing the less commonly taught languages that cannot rely on prior student preparation.Accepted manuscrip

Connecting with the Y Generation: an analysis of factors associated with the academic performance of foundation IS students

[Abstract]: A strategy to overcome challenges associated with teaching a foundation Information Systems (IS) course to large cohorts of Business students has been highly successful. To further refine the strategy, a survey was conducted to better understand attitudes and computer experience of the students. This study revealed that factors such as gender, age, study mode, type of secondary school attended, level of previous computing studies, perceived knowledge, frequency of use and attitudes towards using computers did not predict academic performance. Academic performance and characteristics of students belonging to the Y Generation were also compared with those of the Older Generation. Differences between these generations were found to exist in relation to perceived knowledge, level of previous computing studies, and experience of formal computing studies. It is imperative that educators be aware of the characteristics of the growing Y Generation students. This research has raised critical curriculum issues for the development of foundation IS pedagogy

Curriculum renewal for interprofessional education in health

In this preface we comment on four matters that we think bode well for the future of interprofessional education in Australia. First, there is a growing articulation, nationally and globally, as to the importance of interprofessional education and its contribution to the development of interprofessional and collaborative health practices. These practices are increasingly recognised as central to delivering effective, efficient, safe and sustainable health services. Second, there is a rapidly growing interest and institutional engagement with interprofessional education as part of pre-registration health professional education. This has changed substantially in recent years. Whilst beyond the scope of our current studies, the need for similar developments in continuing professional development (CPD) for health professionals was a consistent topic in our stakeholder consultations. Third, we observe what might be termed a threshold effect occurring in the area of interprofessional education. Projects that address matters relating to IPE are now far more numerous, visible and discussed in terms of their aggregate outcomes. The impact of this momentum is visible across the higher education sector. Finally, we believe that effective collaboration is a critical mediating process through which the rich resources of disciplinary knowledge and capability are joined to add value to existing health service provision. We trust the conceptual and practical contributions and resources presented and discussed in this report contribute to these developments.Office of Learning and Teaching Australi

Teaching and Assessing Soft Skills

[excerpt from article] It is our job as legal educators to put our law graduates in the best position to succeed as new lawyers.1 And to succeed, law graduates must possess certain qualities or character traits that will enable them to thrive within legal organizations.2 Despite many calls for reform in legal education to include more practice-related skills, including professionalism, many law professors teaching doctrinal courses are reluctant to incorporate teaching professional competencies and behaviors.3 They are unwilling to do so even though they have long decried students’ lack of professional skills.4 Professors complain that students show up late for classes and are unwilling to work hard. They criticize students for failing to persevere when faced with challenges or critiques, respond to professors’ emails, engage in teaching exercises, listen to their classmates, closely read assignments, or follow directions. Professors note that students’ attention spans are too short and they are addicted to their phones. It follows that the same student behaviors we see in the classroom transfer to practice. If these behaviors impair our students’ performance as attorneys, we should take steps to remedy the problem by teaching and assessing the qualities and character traits necessary to succeed throughout the law school curriculum, including in the first-year and other doctrinal classes

Investigating Continuing Professional Development Provided for Egyptian Higher Education Online Tutors

Tutors confront great challenges in their teaching practices, including changes in subject content, new instructional methods, changes laws and procedures and students’ needs. In online learning (OL), more changes can be added, namely, the massive and accelerated advance in technology. Therefore, online tutors need to be provided with CPD that develops their skills and experience to improve the effectiveness of their distance learning courses. This paper investigates how Egyptian Higher Education (HE) online tutors are provided with Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to pursue their work. Data for this paper was collected form 20 online tutors from two major Egyptian universities. This paper explores the current situation of CPD provided for HE online tutors with its affordances, limitations, and proposed recommendations that can help to overcome these challenges

Standardised library instruction assessment: an institution-specific approach

Introduction We explore the use of a psychometric model for locally-relevant, information literacy assessment, using an online tool for standardised assessment of student learning during discipline-based library instruction sessions. Method A quantitative approach to data collection and analysis was used, employing standardised multiple-choice survey questions followed by individual, cognitive interviews with undergraduate students. The assessment tool was administered to five general education psychology classes during library instruction sessions. AnalysisDescriptive statistics were generated by the assessment tool. Results. The assessment tool proved a feasible means of measuring student learning. While student scores improved on every survey question, there was uneven improvement from pre-test to post-test for different questions. Conclusion Student scores showed more improvement for some learning outcomes over others, thus, spending time on fewer concepts during instruction sessions would enable more reliable evaluation of student learning. We recommend using digital learning objects that address basic research skills to enhance library instruction programmes. Future studies will explore different applications of the assessment tool, provide more detailed statistical analysis of the data and shed additional light on the significance of overall scores