Assessing professional skills development at a third year level

Employers, professional bodies, instructors and students themselves recognise the need for graduates to leave university with a good understanding of both disciplinary content as well as a range of highly developed professional skills. Many universities have responded to this need by encouraging the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Briguglio, Carmela, Soontiens, Werner, de la Harpe, B.
Other Authors: Alison Bunker
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Teaching and Learning Forum 2002
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/13409
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author Briguglio, Carmela
Soontiens, Werner
de la Harpe, B.
author2 Alison Bunker
author_facet Alison Bunker
Briguglio, Carmela
Soontiens, Werner
de la Harpe, B.
author_sort Briguglio, Carmela
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Employers, professional bodies, instructors and students themselves recognise the need for graduates to leave university with a good understanding of both disciplinary content as well as a range of highly developed professional skills. Many universities have responded to this need by encouraging the development of such skills in their programs of study. Curtin Business School has implemented the Professional Skills Project that aims to integrate the teaching and assessing of professional skills into the units of the Bachelor of Commerce degree program.As part of this initiative, the first author successfully won a grant to implement a project that focussed on supporting students' development of their presentation and written communication skills in his third year management unit. These skills were specifically selected based on the lecturer's previous experiences of teaching the unit which showed that while students in CBS are given opportunities to develop their of professional skills throughout the course, there seemed to be a significant variation in students' skill levels. The variation in skill development was particularly apparent in the assessment of group presentations and written assignments in semester one 2001. Thus, opportunities for students to develop these skills were integrated into the unit and data on students' perceptions of their skill development were obtained by them completing a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the unit.In this paper, we outline how the skills were taught and assessed, present the data on the changes in students' perceptions of their skill levels, and discuss the implications for teaching and assessing presentation and written communication skills in the context of the discipline.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-134092022-09-07T06:08:56Z Assessing professional skills development at a third year level Briguglio, Carmela Soontiens, Werner de la Harpe, B. Alison Bunker Geoff Swan international education professional skills internationalisation Employers, professional bodies, instructors and students themselves recognise the need for graduates to leave university with a good understanding of both disciplinary content as well as a range of highly developed professional skills. Many universities have responded to this need by encouraging the development of such skills in their programs of study. Curtin Business School has implemented the Professional Skills Project that aims to integrate the teaching and assessing of professional skills into the units of the Bachelor of Commerce degree program.As part of this initiative, the first author successfully won a grant to implement a project that focussed on supporting students' development of their presentation and written communication skills in his third year management unit. These skills were specifically selected based on the lecturer's previous experiences of teaching the unit which showed that while students in CBS are given opportunities to develop their of professional skills throughout the course, there seemed to be a significant variation in students' skill levels. The variation in skill development was particularly apparent in the assessment of group presentations and written assignments in semester one 2001. Thus, opportunities for students to develop these skills were integrated into the unit and data on students' perceptions of their skill development were obtained by them completing a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the unit.In this paper, we outline how the skills were taught and assessed, present the data on the changes in students' perceptions of their skill levels, and discuss the implications for teaching and assessing presentation and written communication skills in the context of the discipline. 2002 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/13409 Teaching and Learning Forum fulltext
spellingShingle international education
professional skills
internationalisation
Briguglio, Carmela
Soontiens, Werner
de la Harpe, B.
Assessing professional skills development at a third year level
title Assessing professional skills development at a third year level
title_full Assessing professional skills development at a third year level
title_fullStr Assessing professional skills development at a third year level
title_full_unstemmed Assessing professional skills development at a third year level
title_short Assessing professional skills development at a third year level
title_sort assessing professional skills development at a third year level
topic international education
professional skills
internationalisation
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/13409