An Open Educational Resource to develop Digital Literacy Skills for Employability in the Life and Health Sciences through a Staff-Student Partnership Kay Hack, David Skerrett-Byrne and Shane Kilduff

An Open Educational Resource to develop Digital Literacy Skills for Employability in the Life and Health Sciences through a Staff-Student Partnership Kay Hack, David Skerret-Byrne and Shane Kilduff

Digital Literacies? “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.”

HEA Digital Literacies in the Disciplines  A series of mini-projects that aim to encourage the development of digital literacies among staff and students in their disciplines.  The School of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster is one of nine mini-projects funded through this project  Other projects in Psychology, Modern Languages, History, the Arts and Teacher Training  Developing Open Educational Resources

Project Aims  To develop a re-usable open educational resource (OER) which will support students in preparing for careers in the health or life science sectors  Embed tasks within the OER that prompt evaluation and development of personal digital literacy.  Develop the OER in partnership with students

Xerte: provides a tool kit for  the production of interactive eLearning materials  simple wizards used to compile content, create quizzes, provide links…..  repository for sharing, reusing, and adapting content

Employability Digital Literacies

Students as Partners  Extra-curricular activity linked to Professional Practice module  Opportunity to evidence soft skills: team work & communication skills time & task management

“I got involved in this project is because as a recent graduate I understand the confusion and frustration of deciding what to do next and how to get there, and felt my experience could help direct this project.” David Skerrett-Byrne, MSc Biotechnology “I felt it was an important subject of study to aid students in their career progression. Furthermore, the project has helped to develop my own communication and teamwork skills which will benefit me in my future career” Shane Kilduff, MSc Biotechnology Students as Partners

Professional Practice Module:  Identifying & evidencing DL skills  Evaluating & developing Digital Identity  Developing job application & interview skills

Classroom Activity:  Identify key words used in job advertisements  Think about what they mean  Rank them in terms of their importance.  Identify and articulate the required evidence

Interactive/Online Based:  Assign what DL skills they think evidence the skills required for the position  Helps articulate skills & experience to future employers

Career Paths for Life & Health Science Graduates Life & Health Science Industry - QC / QA Postgraduate Studies Post Doc Academia Life & Health Science Related Regulatory Affairs Sales & Marketing Scientific Writing Engineering Bioinformatics Transferable Skills: I.T. Accounting Banking & Finance Human Resources

Interactive Tools: ‘Drag and Drop’ Exercise

Aims of exercises “Taking this information, we were able to use the Xerte programme to create various exercises to enable other students to:  Identify the different career paths available to them  Identify the essential requirements for the position  Think about the digital literacy skills that evidence these requirements”

Evaluation  2 nd year students from Biomedical Sciences  Students from Faculty of Life and Health Sciences enrolled on extra-curricular Employability Award  Repurpose for other disciplines

Feedback and Engagement Blog: Website: Twitter: hack_kay HEA Annual Conference: Poster 135