DCU SALIS and Careers Service team wins ‘Transferable Skills’ award
Wednesday, 28 September 2005

Angela Collins, Careers Service Waterford , Orlaith Tunney, Project Manager, TCD Careers Advisory Service , Veronica Crosbie, Juliette Pechenart, Dr Maggie Gibbon, Rhona Sherry, Project Office,TCD Careers Advisory Service, Muireann Ni Dhuigneain, Head of Careers, DCU and Caroline Nash, Project Steering Committee, IBEC

A team of DCU staff from both SALIS and from the Careers Service were today presented with the ‘European Award for Languages – the Language Label 2005’ by Mary Hanafin, TD, Minister of Education and Science, at an event which took place in the Law Society, Blackhall Place.

The recipients of the award were Muireann ni Dhuigneain, Head of DCU’s Careers Service, as well as Dr Maggie Gibbon, Dr Jenny Bruen, Ms Veronica Crosbie, Ms Juliette Pechenart, Fiona Gallagher and Niamh Kelly of the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies.

The collaborative project, ‘Transferable skills in third level modern languages curricula’, was funded by the HEA and implemented by staff from three academic institutions, Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin and Waterford Institute of Technology. They were supported by funding from the European Commission which recognises language-learning initiatives that are innovative, creative and motivating for learners.

The aim of the Transferable Skills Project is to raise language students’ awareness of their transferable skills by explicitly integrating these skills into their academic programmes. Research carried out by the project identified the kinds of transferable skills which are most important for third-level students to develop in preparation for their transition to the workplace. These included oral communication, time management, team work, presentation skills and multi-tasking. This research formed the basis of the project’s pilot programme which was implemented by academic staff in language courses they were teaching during the first term of the 2004/05 academic year. For this pilot programme, each lecturer customised or developed skills materials for integration into their regular language curriculum, the purpose of which was to highlight their students’ skill development in tandem with their language learning. An evaluation of the pilot programme revealed encouraging evidence that the students’ confidence in and awareness of their skills did appear to improve over the time period in question.

The Transferable Skills Project is innovative to the extent that it is the first time that specific research on transferable skills has been carried out in Ireland and consequently, the first time that these skills have been highlighted within language learning in a very explicit way. The value of this project lies in the fact that it assists students to acknowledge that they gain much more than language skills through learning a language, thus increasing their confidence in themselves and in the marketability and relevance of their qualification when they graduate. Even if students do not ultimately work in a language-centred profession, they realise that they can apply the skills they have learned to a range of other professions and to a range of tasks within both their working and personal lives.

While the project was implemented specifically with language students, its work is relevant to all disciplines, as all students can benefit from the development of these kinds of skills, regardless of discipline or career path.