Principles in Partnership: Embedding Employability in Curriculum Design

The higher education sector is seeing an increasingly competitive environment for student recruitment, in which students make decisions on the basis of the quality of teaching and learning (T&L), the overall student experience, the strength of student engagement and the student voice. It is important that programmes are also seen to develop effectively the abilities and skills required to enhance student employability. The aim of the curriculum review project described in this case study was to develop a collaborative, holistic, programme-level approach to the development of a suite of MSc programmes in the Department of Food & Nutritional Sciences at the University of Reading, the goal being to structure T&L provision in order to produce graduates able to apply multi-disciplinary scientific principles in practical, real-world situations. So as to generate a professional profile succinct enough to be embedded in the curriculum and inspire new T&L practices, staff, students and employers contributed to the exercise through workshops, curriculum and assessment mapping sessions, output creation and analysis.