Exploring student futures as business graduates

‘Work-ready’ curriculum initiatives include helping students to conceptualise their intended career, yet students often have a poor understanding of what their careers might look like and rarely plan their careers prior to graduation. One way of assisting final-year students is to support their deve...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lindsay, Sophie, Benati, Kelly, Bennett, Dawn, Jevons, Colin
Other Authors: Smith, Judith
Format: Conference Paper
Published: 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/81454
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author Lindsay, Sophie
Benati, Kelly
Bennett, Dawn
Jevons, Colin
author2 Smith, Judith
author_facet Smith, Judith
Lindsay, Sophie
Benati, Kelly
Bennett, Dawn
Jevons, Colin
author_sort Lindsay, Sophie
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description ‘Work-ready’ curriculum initiatives include helping students to conceptualise their intended career, yet students often have a poor understanding of what their careers might look like and rarely plan their careers prior to graduation. One way of assisting final-year students is to support their development of career and self-awareness. Our qualitative research explored the career and self-awareness of 35 final-year undergraduate business students enrolled in a work-integrated learning capstone unit at an Australian research intensive university in 2017. Leximancer mapping of student responses to a two-part, career literacy-focused inquiry showed that students associated proficient communication skills, being confident with people, and being adept at teamwork with successful business graduates. Students believed that the main differences between themselves and these characteristics were their lack of career awareness and their ability to communicate. Though the findings showed some alignment between skills that students attributed to successful business graduates and skills that employers are known to seek in graduates, there is much room for improvement, particularly in communication.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-814542021-08-17T08:13:41Z Exploring student futures as business graduates Lindsay, Sophie Benati, Kelly Bennett, Dawn Jevons, Colin Smith, Judith Robinson, Karen Campbell, Matthew ‘Work-ready’ curriculum initiatives include helping students to conceptualise their intended career, yet students often have a poor understanding of what their careers might look like and rarely plan their careers prior to graduation. One way of assisting final-year students is to support their development of career and self-awareness. Our qualitative research explored the career and self-awareness of 35 final-year undergraduate business students enrolled in a work-integrated learning capstone unit at an Australian research intensive university in 2017. Leximancer mapping of student responses to a two-part, career literacy-focused inquiry showed that students associated proficient communication skills, being confident with people, and being adept at teamwork with successful business graduates. Students believed that the main differences between themselves and these characteristics were their lack of career awareness and their ability to communicate. Though the findings showed some alignment between skills that students attributed to successful business graduates and skills that employers are known to seek in graduates, there is much room for improvement, particularly in communication. 2018 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/81454 fulltext
spellingShingle Lindsay, Sophie
Benati, Kelly
Bennett, Dawn
Jevons, Colin
Exploring student futures as business graduates
title Exploring student futures as business graduates
title_full Exploring student futures as business graduates
title_fullStr Exploring student futures as business graduates
title_full_unstemmed Exploring student futures as business graduates
title_short Exploring student futures as business graduates
title_sort exploring student futures as business graduates
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/81454