Session Information
22 SES 05.5, General Poster Session NW 22
General Poster Session
Contribution
Universities around the world are striving to improve graduates employability. It is increasingly popular to say that universities should prepare students for jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies that have not yet been invented to solve problems that are not yet known to be problems (Jackson, 2008). This is a real challenge that can even be considered as a wicked problem (Rittel, 1973). Can the graduates’ employability improvement be classified as a wicked problem? There are many arguments for this. They can be considered from two main perspectives: graduates’ professional career and universities study programs development. As we know, employability should not only mean getting a job at some company after graduation. It should also mean that graduates have successful professional careers. However, there is no definition of a successful career. The measures of success will be different for each person planning a career. It is not possible at the university to formulate one pattern that all students should follow. What makes an individual successful is often a unique combination of traits that cannot be replicated in another person. There is no single trait profile that is universally applicable to all tasks, occupations, nor it is technically possible for all learners to develop the same trait (Zhao et al.,2019). For this reason, there is a need to place an emphasis on competencies that enable graduates to think of themselves as one-person enterprises with personal business models (Clark et al.,2012) that should be agile and periodically revised. University perspective shows a high level of inertia related to keeping the educational programs up-to-date with regard to job market requirements. It is related to many stakeholders involved (University Management Staff, Teaching Staff Members, Researchers, Career Offices) and mostly traditional heavy processes conducted in this area. As a result, there is a weak correlation between study programs and labor market requirements, which can negatively affect graduates employability. Solving these problems needs an innovative approach that will help universities to be more agile and fast adapt to changes in labor market requirements, in order to have up-to-date study programs. What is more, the approach should also help students to be more agile in educational track and career development.
Developed by the authors of this paper BEAST approach comes up against these problems by providing a comprehensive framework for educational track and career development. It enables students to be focused on personal resources that fit the requirements of the labour market and at the same time are related to their interests and passions. Our approach is multi-sided which means that it can be also used by universities’ stakeholders (Teaching Staff members, University Management Staff, and Career Offices). The approach is being developed in the frame of three projects: “Adaption and Evolution D.Y.L. Methodology to Individualized Career Planning in Higher Education Institutions - DYLMIC project” supported by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (DYLMIC, 2019) as well as “BE Aware STudent – BEAST project” (BEAST, 2018) and “OMNI–BE Aware Student – OMNI-BEAST” (OMNI-BEAST, 2020) supported in frame the Erasmus+ Programme. The projects are being implemented by University of Information Technology and Managementin Rzeszów, Alma Mater Studiorum - Universita Di Bologna, Instituto Politécnico De Portalegre and Université de Nice – Sophia Antipolis.
Method
The BEAST approach is agile in its core. It takes into consideration constant changes in the labor market, agile career planning, and implementation as well as the development of study programs. We have framed the BEAST Agile Career Development Manifesto containing the values that should drive the activities of students to effectively and efficiently manage their professional development at the university and after graduation. Our approach can be considered as a comprehensive methodology consisted of a process and a set of tools. The process is versioned separately for students and for universities. BEAST approach unifies several currently available frameworks that provide specific value-added elements needed for comprehensive and self–contained methodology. Key elements of value proposition related to frameworks included in BEAST are the following: • Business Model You & Business Model Canvas. In the BEAST approach, the transition from business model to personal business model has been made, what enabled to support prototype and test approach to educational track as well as career development and create in an agile manner up-to-date reference models of job market requirements for selected occupations. • Designing Your Life. The main reason for including this element is that a student or graduate who is aware of his personal resources is able to design the career/education path that fits job market requirements and is tuned to his real needs (interests, passions, personality, abilities). • Designing Thinking. Design Thinking provides the framework for professional career/education wayfinding and helps students to self-reflect, understand their personal resources, define professional identity, generate ideas related to occupation, prototype personal business models, finally test the choices made, and re-design if needed. All these frameworks have been integrated into one approach. Business Model You & Business Model Canvas and Designing Your Life were the source of many techniques adapted to education track & career development. Personal Business Model Canvas technique constitutes the foundation for the agile improvement of the universities’ study programs. Design Thinking framework has been used in an innovative way on two levels. The first one is related to BEAST approach development. The outcomes in BEAST family projects have been created in the frame of Design Thinking stages what enabled to keep stakeholders fully centricity. On the second level (methodology processes), Design Thinking has been adopted to drive career/education track development process conducted with BEAST tools.
Expected Outcomes
The BEAST approach includes a set of innovative tools to support the processes. The most important are the following: • IT Career Canvas Catalog (BEAST Project) – a catalog of personal business models related to IT industry including job positions of the future describes in a structured manner with the use of Personal Business Model Canvas (Jakiela, Świętoniowska, Wójcik, 2021a; 2021b). The OMNI-BEAST project catalog is being extended to other occupation domains – e.g. project management, digital transformation. • The Guide to Job Positions Canvanizing Body of Knowledge (OMNI-BEAST Project). It is an attempt to provide universities with an approach to agile planning, improvement, and validation of educational offerings. This should translate into higher employability of university graduates as well as constitute the foundation for increasing students' awareness with regard to education track job market attractiveness. • Student Purposeful Development Toolbox (DYLMIC Project) – this is a set of carefully selected techniques and tools to support the process of learning path and professional career agile development in the frame of prototype, test, and revise mindset. The techniques included in the toolbox have been carefully described in the form of an interactive manual that has been provided to stakeholders at the partners’ universities. The BEAST approach is being constantly developed with regard to process, tools, and techniques. Some of the products have been implemented in partners universities’ educational processes, e.g. the new subject “Business Model I, Passionate Professional” has been incorporated into study programs. Currently, students are providing feedback that is carefully collected and used for improvements. Further research plans are related to the analysis, design, and development of online platform called Career ProVision that will support the users of BEAST approach by providing interactive digital versions of the techniques, personalization, and data collection mechanisms.
References
1.Jackson, N. (2008). Tackling the wicked problem of creativity in higher education. Background paper, ARC Centre for the Creative. 2.Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences, 4(2), 155-169. 3.Zhao, Y., Wehmeyer, M., Basham, J., & Hansen, D. (2019). Tackling the wicked problem of measuring what matters: Framing the questions. ECNU Review of Education, 2(3), 262-278. 4.Clark, T., Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y. (2012). Business model you: a one-page method for reinventing your career. John Wiley & Sons. 5.DYLMIC project - the project financed in the frame of the Strategic Partnerships Programme (No. PPI/APM/2019/1/00090) and led by the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow in a partnership involving universities from Poland, Italy, France and Portugal (2019–present). 6.BEAST project - the project financed in the frame of the ERASMUS+ program (No. 2018–1PL01-KA203–051137) and led by the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow in a partnership involving universities from Poland, Italy, and Portugal (2018–2021). 7.OMNI-BEAST project - the project financed in the frame of the ERASMUS+ program (No. 2020-1-PL01-KA203-082198) and led by the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow in a partnership involving universities from Poland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal (2020– present). 8.Jakiela J., Świętoniowska J., Wójcik J. (2021a). Job Market Driven IT Career Development with Design Thinking Framework & Business Model Mindset. Proceedings of the 37th International Business Information Management Association (IBIMA), 30-31 May 2021, Cordoba, Spain. 9.Jakiela J., Świętoniowska J., Wójcik J. (2021b). Design Thinking for Industry 4.0 Career Design – how to increase Professional Development Awareness for Future Enterprises’ Human Resources, In Industry 4.0. A Glocal Perspective, 186 – 200, Routledge.
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