Key Skills: making connections between HE and the workplace

This paper draws on a recent research project into high-level key skills links between HE and employment. The project has worked with groups in several universities and companies to explore how the developmental model embedded in the QCA key skills national standards can be used to support learning and assessment of higher level (QCA levels 4 and 5) key skills. Employers increasingly value skills such as teamworking, communicating effectively with partners and customers, and being able to adapt to new situations and develop new capabilities. Within organisations individuals may be expected to move from project to project and job to job. They may be expected to identify their own particular training needs, work within the company business goals and develop their own individual skills portfolio to satisfy professional recognition requirements. HE currently appears to offer relatively little support or training to develop the key skills needed in such environments. As part of the project students in HE have used a framework of planning, monitoring progress, presenting outcomes and reviewing progress to develop their skills. The model encourages learners to recognise and articulate their own capabilities more clearly, and offers an assessment structure for profiling achievement. It is this 'meta-skills' approach that is used to bridge the gap between HE and employment by encouraging learners to be actively aware of the context in which they are currently situated, and to make connections with experience, skills and knowledge they have gained elsewhere. The paper presents some preliminary findings and comments from the project

Learning outcomes and their assessment: putting Open University pedagogical practice under the microscope

The Open University (OU) is the United Kingdom's only university devoted to distance learning. It is also the UK's largest university with over 200,000 students overall. Around 150,000 students are studying undergraduate level courses. Over the last decade major policy changes have impacted on UK higher education. Following the recommendations of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (Dearing Report, 1997) and the establishment of the Quality Assurance Agency, all UK universities have been required to define learning outcomes for their programmes and link learning outcomes to teaching and assessment. This major pedagogic shift led the OU to establish the Learning Outcomes and their Assessment (LOTA) project to re-examine the ways its courses are planned, designed, delivered and assessed, and to initiate necessary institution-wide changes. Explicitly linking outcomes, assessment and teaching, actively using assessment for learning, and supporting academic staff development are key elements in enhancing student learning

Unusual coloration in scarabaeid beetles

In this paper we investigate the reflection of circularly polarized light from the exocuticle of the scarabaeid beetle Gymnopleurus virens. Reflection spectra are deeply modulated, exhibiting a number of relatively narrow well-defined peaks, which differ from previously studied specimens. By comparing model calculations and electron microscopy work with the recorded spectra, we can propose the presence of specific structural defects responsible for the unusual spectra