Yesterday, I was honored to take part in International Week at Creative Wellbeing of Helsinki Metropolia UAS. I had pleasure to work with Dr Christopher Seenan, Lecturer in Physiotherapy from Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. Our workshop was bound around student employability.
Workshop in action – hands up, students!
The workshop participants were exchange and Metropolia’s students as well as Metropolia lecturers. We heard from Chris how in Scotland, GCU has searched for strategies that involve and empower students in maximizing their employability skills.
The workshop attendees had group discussion over the matter and their key findings include the importance of self-assurance, self-confidence, resilience and student’s willingess to engage in Life Long Learning.
My input to this workshop was about Metropolia’s Alumni viewpoint. We measure our success in educating future professionals by asking our Alumni to fill out a survey a year after their graduation. The questionnaire focuses on Alumni employability and it is highly detailed with questions concerning their employment after graduation, the lenght of possible unemployment, current employer, their own position, the sector they work at, their payrate, their future plans of career developing.
The survey also measures how the Alumni think of Metropolia’s curricula and quality of given education, i.e. has their Alma Mater given them enough and suitable tools and knowledge to enter the labour market.
The Alumni Survey has been conducted for 5 years now together with other Universities of Applied Sciences in Finland. This survey reaches each year answering rate of 40-45% and the results show how each year the labour market changes from better to worse – or some day in the future, hopefully, vice versa.
International Staff Week continues at Vanha Viertotie all week. I encourage everyone to use these kind of opportunities to network internationally and enjoy inspiring collaboration with international partners!
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