Practice Matters: Issue 5
Welcome to the fifth issue of QAA’s Practice Matters. This series is designed to support practitioners in maintaining quality in challenging times, navigating and responding to challenges when circumstances are complex or uncertain.
Within each of the topics, we explore practical ways to improve the student experience, maintain academic standards, and respond effectively when resources are limited or capacity is stretched.
Developing employability skills through collaboration
This is the second of a two issues focusing on employability, and its publication and focus aligns with ‘Colleges Week 2026: Skills for all’, run by the Association of Colleges.
In the previous issue we explored how we can embed and develop our students’ employability skills within the curriculum.
This issue considers how we can work collaboratively with internal and external interested parties, such as careers services, employers, third sector organisations and alumni, to help students understand the connection between what they are learning and how it applies to their graduate future.
This does not have to be additional, extracurricular activity. Given the time pressures students are facing, external collaboration can still be built into modules and programmes.
Reflective questions
- Are you aware of how your careers service can support you to support your students?
- Do you know what type of graduate work and careers your students progress into?
- How can employers be meaningfully and sustainably involved in your module delivery?
- What can your alumni contribute towards helping your current students’ understanding of their skills, attributes and options?
Top tips
Your careers service may be able to support you and your students in a number of ways on your modules – you don’t need to do all the work around employability yourself. Equally, don’t expect to transfer work-related learning onto the careers team as they may be a stretched resource too, and it will only be meaningful to your students if it is woven into the content and delivery of your module. Use a collaborative approach to find the most effective ways of supporting your students.
- Careers services can help you identify the skills students are developing through their learning on your modules (See Practice Matters Issue 4: Stepping Beyond Study: Employability in the Curriculum)
Careers services may be able to co-deliver sessions, where resourcing permits, assisting on matters such as skills analysis and development; job applications and interview knowledge, techniques and experience; and equipping students with sector-aligned terminology.
Careers services can support with finding and inviting guest speakers that represent a spectrum of professions, industries, and backgrounds, ensuring that they reflect the diversity of the students. These speakers can be utilised to share insights into their career journeys, and fundamentally what the world of work is like in their profession.
Careers services can share with students real employer feedback, such as insights from employer surveys, and labour market research tied to your discipline, and a range of possible graduate pathways, to help them understand the skills that will take them forward.
Your careers service can help identify volunteering opportunities, internships and placements that are directly relevant to your students, and the means to access them.
Monitor what your students are engaging with and getting the most from. Can activities, resources and support with less active engagement be repromoted, adapted or dropped?
If you are redesigning or planning a new module, or revalidating a programme, involve careers and employability colleagues from the start. They can support with all of the above. They may also be able to support in reviewing assessment design, graduate outcomes data, labour market intelligence, and local employer feedback to help identify skills gaps in your programme and to help understand what graduates typically go on to do.
Careers services can also use their established industry connections to help involve them in your learning, teaching and assessment.
Your careers service can support with involving employers, third sector organisations and alumni in your modules and programmes. You may have connections of your own both as an individual and as a programme team. A key to the success of this is fostering both effective and sustainable forms of engagement and activity. Below are some suggestions for involving external organisations, employers and alumni. Again, working early and collaboratively with them will help set realistic expectations for what can be achieved to benefit your students.
Bring employers into teaching, physically or virtually, through guest talks, discussion panels, recorded video messages and talks. The latter can be made available asynchronously so students can access at any point in their learning.
Integrate employer or industry input through live briefs, hackathons and real-time projects. This experiential learning approach fosters creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration, preparing students for diverse workplace challenges.
Involve employers in formative and, if feasible, summative assessment; for example, providing feedback on student project/dissertation proposals, or participating in the assessment of presentations/pitches.
Draw on your alumni to explore the world of graduate work, through class visits, short videos, and/or cases studies from graduates. This can help students see their future selves, understand more immediate career journeys and feel more connected to their subject’s pathway into work.
