Integrating Employability Skills into Assessment
What does it mean to integrate employability skills into your assessments?
Integrating employability skills into assessment involves designing assessment tasks that explicitly give students the opportunity to competencies that are essential for success in the workplace, such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership, adaptability, and resilience.
To integrate employability skills into assessment, instructors can design assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate these competencies. For example...
Team assignment: Students work in teams to solve complex problems and make recommendations. Each team member takes on a specific role and communicates with others to complete the task. Teams present the analysis and recommendations as a report and/or team presentation. The employability skills assessed are:
- Problem-solving skills
- Evaluation skills
- Collaboration skills
- Negotiation skills
- Communication skills (written and/or verbal & non-verbal skills)
Reflective essay: Students analyse their work placement or internship. The employability skills assessed are:
- Analysis skills
- Evaluation skills
- Written communication skills
To effectively integrate employability skills into assessment, and design, the task should align with teaching & learning activities and subject learning outcomes. This includes developing assessment tasks and rubrics that ensure these skills can be explicitly observed and measured.