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Office of the Vice-President for Academic Affairs
Students experience the MySkills Platform on the Glasnevin campus.

DCU leads the way on transversal skills with launch of unique MySkills platform

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As employers increasingly adopt ‘skills-first’ recruitment strategies, and students and graduates face the challenge of navigating unprecedented uncertainty linked with the rapidly increasing functionality of artificial intelligence, the need to develop, apply and evidence one’s transversal skills is more important than ever. Accordingly, the official launch of DCU’s MySkills platform in March marked a major and timely milestone for the university.

Since 2021, in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, and led by Dr Ciarán Dunne, the university’s Transversal Skills Director, DCU has designed, built and implemented a unique and highly robust transversal skills framework and ecosystem, whereby skills ranging from critical and creative thinking to digital and data literacy are now being formally integrated and robustly assessed within our undergraduate courses.

The MySkills platform, which is unique both in Ireland and internationally, represents the final stage in this process, as it records students’ level of competence in their transversal skills and, crucially, enables them to generate a detailed, personalised and customisable transversal skills report, which they can share with potential employers, simultaneously supporting graduate employability, as well as more informed, efficient and evidence-based recruitment decisions among employers. MySkills encapsulates DCU’s unwavering commitment to academic rigour, student empowerment, enterprise engagement, the practical and impactful application of knowledge and skills, and our fundamental mission to transform lives and societies. 

Dr Ciarán Dunne, DCU Transversal Skills Director, said:

“When we reflect upon our modern world, it becomes evident that the vast majority of challenges and problems we face at a local, national and international level do not stem from a lack of information. They stem from a lack of leadership, ethical decision making, critical and creative thinking, communication and collaboration, and several more key transversal skills. Therefore, if we understand what is needed to both harness opportunities and address our collective challenges and problems, it is incumbent upon higher education institutions to invest in the meaningful development of these skills and also create a mechanism to evidence them. This is precisely what DCU is doing.”