Improving Employability by Developing
Professional Skills Support Material for
Engineering Students
Scarlett Xiao, Richard Cloutman, David Lauder and Dr. Naj Kadhim
School of Electronic Communication and Electrical Engineering
University of Hertfordshire
 Background and Aims
The current Skills Site on StudyNet only covers
generic skills. There is a need of skills support in the
engineering provision. The project aims to develop
engineering professional skills support material for
engineering students. The material is in line with the
UKSPEC (UK Standard for Professional Engineering
Competence) requirements, which is core for the
whole of engineering courses in the Faculty of
Engineering and Information Sciences. Assisting
students in the development of these skills is the key
to integrating PDP (Personal Development Planning)
effectively into the engineering context.
 Methodology
The project started with identifying students’ skills
development needs based on the requirements of
professional institutions. The purpose of integrating
these requirements into the material is to raise
students’ awareness of the expectations from
industry and help them to develop themselves
towards the market demand.
A set of 23 Skills Templates (Figure 1) was
produced. A Template consists of the Skill Title, the
description of the skill, the statements of three levels
(Basic, Medium and Advanced) of competence and
Evidence Sections for students to provide examples
to support their claim of the competence.
The material was designed to allow students to audit
their skills; assist them to record evidence and review
their progress.
By mapping skills development
processes onto PDP activities, students can develop
their skills effectively within the MAPs (My Active
Planning System) framework.
The Instructions
(Figure 2) were also created to provide guidance for
students on how to use the Skills Template together
with their MAPs.
 Implementation
The skills support material was piloted through
1ELE0058 ‘Career Skills Development’ module with
level one engineering students in Semester AB
2006/2007.
Five pilot sessions were designed.
Activities delivered include:
•Introducing the Skills Template and MAPs;
•Development of skills in Analysing, Reading,
Gathering & Evaluating Information and Time
Management in an engineering context;
•Action planning using MAPs;
•Peer-review of evidence and;
•Re-auditing of skill competences using the Skills
Templates.
 Evaluation
Questionnaires were given to the students who have
attended the pilot sessions.
•70% of the students strongly agreed that the skills
support material has raised their awareness of the
expectations from industry, and the skills they
developed are relevant to their studies and useful
for their future career.
•70% of the students also felt that the skills support
material has given them an easy start of how to
carry out their PDP activities and helped them to
gain better understanding on the benefit of PDP
through practice.
Scarlett Xiao s.a.xiao@herts.ac.uk, Tel: 01707 284191