SEFI Podcast Season 8 Episode 2 – Publication Spotlight Series: Enhancing the Measurement of Employability in Engineering, Insights from a Systematic Literature Review

What is meant by employability? How do we know if students’ employability increases over the course of an engineering degree?

This episode features Andrew Valentine (University of Melbourne). We talk about his paper published within the European Journal of Engineering Education, entitled, “Enhancing the Measurement of Employability in Engineering: Insights from a Systematic Literature Review.”

How did the work come about?

The work is part of a wider PhD project focused on building an instrument to measure employability in engineering. It has four authors, Andrew, Sally Male and Elaine Chapman and forms part of Shen Zhan’s (also known as Jason) PhD studies.

A summary of the paper

The study is a systematic review of existing employability instruments for measuring employability skills in engineering.

The research gap

Andrew explains that there is a lack of clarity in what is meant by employability and how it is measured and that definitions vary between disciplines and stakeholder groups. This means that it is hard to understand whether the employability of students increase during their degree, or to identify areas for further intervention. 

Research Questions

RQ1: What are the existing employability measurement instruments developed in engineering contexts? 

RQ2: What are the key limitations and gaps in the current engineering employability measurement instruments? 

Why a systematic literature review?

Andrew explains that this structured approach allowed for a comprehensive and repeatable review of all measurement instruments related to measuring employability with an engineering context over the last 25 years. 

The results

Andrew explains that the process resulted in 26 papers. They began a descriptive analysis which covered aspects such as instrumentation design and limitations, the use of theoretical frameworks, and coverage of multiple engineering disciplines and stakeholders. They then identified six needs:

1. Need for conceptual Clarity and Consensus. Many papers failed to include a definition of employability, or included varying definitions of employability (for example a variety of stakeholder dependent definitions). 
2. Need for discipline (and sub-discipline) specificity. They identified a lack of discipline or sub-discipline-based measurement instruments. 
3. Need for Holistic Development Foci. The team identified a need to improve the development of instrument by involving different stakeholders throughout the creation process.
4. Need for Transitional Rigor in Operational Definitions. The review identified a need to base instruments on theoretical or conceptual frameworks. 
5. Need for rigorous empirical validation. 
6. Need for robust and apposite reporting mechanisms as opposed to self-report 

What’s next?

The findings will be used to inform the development of an employability instrument, in consultation with different stakeholders unclosing students, graduates, professionals, accreditation bodies. 

Follow this link to read the full paper.