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HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT: ENGAGING EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS INTO CURRICULUM DESIGN AND DELIVERY
ISCAP-Politécnico do Porto, NID_RH (PORTUGAL)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2016 Proceedings
Publication year: 2016
Pages: 1540-1548
ISBN: 978-84-617-5895-1
ISSN: 2340-1095
doi: 10.21125/iceri.2016.1341
Conference name: 9th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 14-16 November, 2016
Location: Seville, Spain
Abstract:
There is widespread recognition that nowadays human resources development is not an exclusive responsibility of employing organizations. People individually have to assume the task of preparing themselves to the employment world, and for higher education institutions this has risen to be one of the top priorities.

This paper presents a case study of how curriculum design and delivery may support university-business communication, and consequently facilitate the development of employability skills. Employability skills are in this work conceptualised as all the technical and non-technical skills that are desirable to have in order to be proficient in a specific labour market.

Three different experiences on a higher education course are described: a project based curricula, an educational-professional network, and a curricular individual development program. With specific aims each, all the three educational strategies work complementarily as drivers for the alignment of students’ development with labour specific needs. Together these curriculum design and delivery options are based on two fundamental foundations, university-business cooperation and students´ engagement in skills’ selection and development.
Keywords:
Human Resources Development, Curriculum, Employability, Higher Education Institutions.