Towards an Efficient Approach for Examining Employability Skills

A student’s approach to an open-ended problem, one with no necessarily right or wrong answer, is crucial to their employability. Indeed the value of a mathematics graduate to an employer is in his/her problem solving skills, and exercises assessing these usually form part of graduate assessment days. The scope for open-ended problems within a mathematics degree is large, yet traditionally these and other transferable skills are not extensively assessed until final year projects. The post-2012 funding shift has significant implications for student recruitment and a fundamental change in the treatment of employability skills is needed in response. The assessment of transferable skills is always possible within extended pieces of coursework, but the marking of these requires a substantial time commitment from staff when class sizes are large. This small study looks at whether it is possible to assess the skills associated with open-ended problems within traditional and timeefficient examinations. 20.1 Background and rationale With the recent shift in undergraduate funding, the future success or failure of a university department has been placed in the hands of student recruitment and league table performance. The employability of graduates has therefore never been more important. But how should mathematics departments encourage and assess these skills in their students in a time efficient and scalable manner? Along with communication skills, a student’s approach to an open-ended problem, one with no necessarily right or wrong answer, is crucial to their employability. Indeed, the value of a mathematics graduate to an employer is in his/her problemsolving skills and the ability to communicate results, and these are usually the focus of graduate assessment days. There has always been scope for the use of open-ended problems in mathematics degrees, particularly within applied mathematics streams, Stephen J. Garrett, e-mail: [email protected] Department of Mathematics University of Leicester