Increasingly, among international organizations concerned with unemployment rates and industry demands, there is an emphasis on the need to improve graduates’ employability skills and the transparency of mechanisms for their recognition. This research presents the Employability Skills Micro-credentialing (ESMC) methodology, designed under the EPICA Horizon 2020 (H2020) project and tested at three East African universities, and shows how it fosters pedagogical innovation and promotes employability skills integration and visibility. The methodology, supported by a competency-based ePortfolio and a digital micro-credentialing system, was evaluated using a mixed-method design, combining descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis to capture complementary stakeholder perspectives. The study involved the participation of 13 lecturers, 169 students, and 24 employers. The results indicate that the ESMC methodology is a promising approach for supporting students in their transition from academia to the workplace. The implementation of the methodology and the involvement of employers entails rethinking educational practices and academic curricula to embed employability skills. It enables all actors to broaden their understanding of the relationship between higher education and the business sector and to sustain visibility, transparency, and reliability of the recognition process. These findings indicate that there are favourable conditions in the region for the adoption of the approach, which is a meaningful solution for the stakeholder community to address the skills gap.
Social media have the potential to transform the museum visitor into an active participant involved in the creation of knowledge. Nevertheless, the application of the relatively new social computing concept to the cultural heritage sector faces many challenges. Consequently, a greater
understanding of the features of the different communication channels and the new methods for measuring the success (or failure) of an exhibition is required. First, we analyse the impact of the use of Web 2.0 technologies on cultural institutions while highlighting the opportunities and risks
of user participation. Secondly, we examine some of the experiments implemented by memory institutions paying particular attention to these institutions' interactive relationships with their publics on the Internet. Finally, we explore some hypotheses about the fears of many Catalan institutions
in relation to the sociocultural web, and provide a series of recommendations for the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies in museums that will achieve positive results.
This paper reports a study about the perceptions of the academic community, employers and civil servants regarding graduates’ employability skills in East Africa. Specifically, it focuses on the mismatch between skills acquired in Higher Education (HE) and those in demand by employers, and explores factors influencing the situation. A mixed method approach was implemented including a survey and a set of focus groups. The questionnaire on employability skills was distributed among regional stakeholders attending the Open Day events organised by three East African HE Institutions. A Principal Components Analysis was applied for the categorisation of the most in-demand skills and the identification of four major workplace skill sets. To gain further insights into the stakeholders’ perceptions of the graduate employability skills gap, 11 focus groups were organised at the same universities. The general results showed that employability skills were mostly perceived as insufficiently developed during the students’ progress in their programs. The final results enabled a better understanding of the nuanced relationship between labour market valuation and graduates’ acquisition of each skill set. It also allowed us to identify problems and barriers, and suggest possible solutions to overcome the shortcomings experienced by the sub-Saharan HE system.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.