Abstract:

Future tertiary graduates are likely to be faced with increased job mobility and changing workplace requirements. Technological advances, globalisation and economic disruption are continuing to impact the workforce participation and requirements in the agri-food sector, and graduates of tertiary programs are required to display proficiency in both technical and employability (transferable) skills. The broad food systems industry has two notable tensions- a documented skills shortage, and with technological developments and globalisation, an associated movement towards greater complexity in required skills. Universities have responded to this by building transferrable skills and employability frameworks into their graduate attributes, and attempting to enable students to build their employability skills and professional identity through curriculum design, authentic assessment and relevant extracurricular activities, but there is still difficulty addressing how nuanced capabilities found in tertiary agribusiness degrees might be collated and displayed by graduates to stakeholders. Evidence suggests that ePortfolios can be an excellent tool to evidence employability in multidisciplinary contexts with embedded individual learning journeys. ePortfolios are a collection of digital evidence demonstrating learning over time, which may aid students articulate their skills and experiences when entering employment. Currently, both students and employers have difficulty recognising and articulating in a standard manner the depth and breadth of the students’ individual learning journey and the skills that they possess, especially given the range of work-integrated learning experiences of graduates. This paper provides a snapshot of WA Agribusiness employer, student and graduate perceptions of employability, skills and knowledge and professional identity of graduating students, and draws conclusions on where the similarities, differences and tensions between the groups lies. With this information, a series of recommendations are made for what evidence can be curated in an agribusiness ePortfolio, and how this can be used to demonstrate learning, technical expertise and transferable skills over the career of the individual. It is envisaged that this will enhance outcomes for students and transparency of student knowledge and skills to agribusiness employers, as well as provide a useable framework for embedding and evidencing employability skills that will be applicable to other higher education programs.

Keywords:

Employability, ePortfolios, industry skills, work integrated learning, experiential learning, life-long learning, technology assisted learning and assessment.