In an attempt to develop students’ employability skills through a job-specific, needs based English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course, this paper investigated conducting a needs analysis to understand the perceptions of the final-year technical students, alumni, and Human Resources (HR) managers for promoting placements in the campus recruitments. By employing a qualitative ethnographic approach, an open-ended questionnaire was conducted with final-year information technology students and structured and unstructured interviews with the HR managers and the alumni respectively. In this study, the communicative needs of the final-year technical students were specifically addressed to provide them with career education and placement training and raise employment opportunities in their course of study. Based on the results of the questionnaire-based survey and subsequent observations in the structured and unstructured interviews, it is widely examined that all of the HR managers reflected on the importance of English language in corporate communications. The findings of the survey also reflected that the perceptions of the alumni and the expectations of the HR managers on verbal and nonverbal skills were well received by the final-year technical students. This is a positive development on the part of students as they were found to be thoroughly aware of their workplace needs and were keen to develop language, communication, and soft skills for successfully entering into the job market. This research implies that connecting institution and industry is a significant factor in helping students obtain job offers and develop the job-specific skills that meet the requirements of the industry.
Digital learning has been the need of the hour as it has been providing access to online resources and to get students engaged in their higher education courses amid COVID-19 lockdown. This paper is focused on highlighting how the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools, media and E-pedagogy as an instructional practice have been robustly used to gain disciplinary knowledge and information and to continuously avail the benefits of virtual learning. Higher education has been specifically digitalized and trialled without any preparation on the part of academies as well as teachers and students. This paper is more concerned on understanding how lockdown accelerated the digitalization of higher education and universities positively responded switching on to technology enabled online platforms for both instruction and evaluation. Further, it is also suggested that in the process of shifting to E-Pedagogy, both teachers and students need to be continuously provided with adequate technical tools and media to stay connected in online classes through virtual mode.
The instrumentality for conducting a specific needs based placement course in an engineering programme is to develop relevant employability skills of the technical students to cater to the communicative demands of the industry. This paper is concerned on understanding tertiary level students' language and communication problems while they face job interviews. This article is treated with triangulated multiple sources and methods to analyze the learning needs of the final year Information Technology students and the target demands of the HR Managers. It is found that the technical students need to adopt relevant job related oral and written communication skills to competently perform in on-campus recruitments. With the due emphasis given on examining present and target situational needs, a specific needs based intensive communicative course is designed and developed to satisfy the learners' learning needs and their target situational demands. It reports on how the technical students are able to satisfy the recruiters in their job interviews.
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