Teaching Improvement Fund 2003 (Faculty of Science)

Enhancing the employability of Science graduates: increasing the awareness of staff and students to the needs of the employers
http://science.uniserve.edu.au/projects/skills/

Status report No. 6
May 2004

The preliminary phase has been completed.
Development phase: The Skills Project has made much progress in the last few months with the arrival of a new UniServe Science team member, Danielle Merrett, who is now coordinating the project.

• Discipline skills for Biology are now included
• Website outsourcing has been initiated
• Homepage built http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~stevec/Science/
• All written content has been completely overhauled and edited for the website.
• The title for website “Life Long Earning: Match your talents with employers’ expectations” has been finalised. This title was created with the intention of marketing the site to students.
• Student website trial discussion sessions have been set for: Wed 5th, Thurs 6th, Fri 7th May 2004 and trial information packs have been given to participants as they register.
• Fliers for recruiting 2nd and 3rd year science students to participate in the On-line trial have been posted around campus and on 2nd and 3rd year lab notice boards.
• Overheads have been given to lecturers in 2nd and 3rd year courses to recruit trial participants and signal faculty endorsement of the project to students.

The short term plan:

• Site to be sent to the Reference Group for review
• Conduct student website trial
• The site is currently being developed on the Architecture server but will become part of the UniSErve Science site and thus move on to the ITS server once complete. This will give the site 24/7 server support.

The long term plan:

• Implement changes suggested from feedback
• Launch the site in Semester 2
• Explore possibilities of advertising the site on MyUni, Web CT and Careers Centre site
• Monitor student use with automatic system
• Evaluate student use and perceptions of usefulness of the site by means of surveys sent out to first year, second year and third year students during 2005.

Danielle Merrett
Mary Peat