SkillClouds: briefing and next steps

The overall aims of today’s session are:

• An overall briefing on the background, current progress and short term plans of the SkillClouds project

• To look further ahead and think about its future direction

SkillClouds: briefing and next steps

Three types of activities with learners

User-centred design sessions

Tag cloud experiment

Card sorting sessions

User Centred Design sessions

AnthropologyEngineering & DesignStudent Reps from range of subjects

Students were strongly in favour of the ‘pervasive’, browse-style SkillClouds approach, and the idea that skills information would come to their desktops without them needing to search for it.

In general they liked the tag cloud presentation of skills and the ability to drill down to deeper information on a given skill.

General consensus away from weighting skills No strong preference for a user-generated content approach

Students’ ability to articulate their skills

I think it’s quite hard to think about yourself in terms of your skills, especially when writing a CV and trying to sell yourself to employers– if someone asks what

skills you’ve got - I don’t know! Like I’m friendly and can write an essay!

Students’ experiences of skills information

“It’s quite difficult. We don’t say – right, we’re learning this skill and this skill. We just say we’re writing an essay or doing whatever course - it’s not thought of in terms of skills.”

“They put it in our course documents, our skills or learning objectives or something, but I don’t think anyone ever reads that, because they all say the same thing.”

Card sorting exercise

“Woo! It knows things about me – I’m quite amazed !”

“This looks exciting – keywords [..] I can put in all those words you feel stupid for using like ‘team work’ but then you know [that] these are the words they are probably looking for”

“[It] gives me ideas of how I can assert skills better on a CV and mention things I wouldn’t have thought of – [I’d] use it more as a springboard than a copy and paste.” “I think it’s really useful to have these initial headings and ways you can get across you have these skills and not sell yourself short [..] where it came up with all the synonyms of how to describe a skill I think that is really useful and something I would use as well”

Next steps

• Autumn term - pilot the tool– Career Development course for Biology & Environmental

Sciences– A selected large degree programme within HUMS/SOCCUL

• Work on including student generated content• Work with any universities who are interested in

exploring the tool

University data

Student data

Options for student generated data

1. Students can simply add/remove items from the cloud

2. Students can increase/decrease an individual tag in to reflect current priorities (and can save the cloud in this state)

3. Data recorded as part of Sussex Plus can allow students to record activities as tags that can be drawn into their cloud

How SkillClouds and Sussex Plus could be linked

Jo writes a reflective piece on her webpage

Can view a display of skills derived from SkillClouds skill database

LeadershipTeam-workInterpersonal

Two years later…

Posted by Jo

Options for University sources of skills data

Source: University-level data

• Very cheap• One set of default resources• Very cheap• One set of default resources

• May lack credibility• Ignores importance of

authenticity

• May lack credibility• Ignores importance of

authenticity

• Cheap• Bringing in some elements

of personalisation

• Cheap• Bringing in some elements

of personalisation

• Skills not tailored very closely to the individual

• Careers experts can populate the cloud

• Skills not tailored very closely to the individual

• Careers experts can populate the cloud

Source: School-level data

Source: Course-level data

• Potential for high level of personalisation - could reflect actuality of students’ choices i.e. electives, options

• Cloud could help inform course choice

• Skills may be similar across courses so could end up with ‘degree-level’ cloud despite substantial investment

• Expensive to collect for all courses – high level of academic input

• Skills may be similar across courses so could end up with ‘degree-level’ cloud despite substantial investment

• Expensive to collect for all courses – high level of academic input

Source: Degree-level data

Positives:•Reflects the core degree skills•High level of authenticity

Negatives:•Skills not tailored very closely to the individual•Requires more academic input

Map assessment types to skills

• Relatively inexpensive in terms of resource requirements

• Links skills with assessment

• Relatively inexpensive in terms of resource requirements

• Links skills with assessment

• Not all skills will be covered• Won’t always know when a skill is

in a course• Cloud may not be very rich if

assessments are similar across courses

• Not all skills will be covered• Won’t always know when a skill is

in a course• Cloud may not be very rich if

assessments are similar across courses