In a constantly evolving society, how can we guarantee students' employability? One avenue is to look at the concept of professional skills in tandem with Universities and the world of work. To do this, the University of Reims is carrying out analysis based on producing a competency framework, the assessment of students' skills by teachers and the promotion for students of their skills through the Dune Eole project's Action 2.3 “competency framework and e-portfolio”. This project requires a change in current practices which requires support.

What is the Action 2.3 "competency framework and e-portfolio"?

It involves working on the concept of skills with several approaches:

The purpose of the competency framework is to help teachers who can use it in order to develop their lessons, design their evaluation, and promote the work of students. It also enables students to make the aims of the lessons more understandable and make their choice of career path more concrete.

The e-porfolio will enable students to highlight and promote the work done, evaluations and their career path. It clearly aims act as a presentation to be used when heading into the world of work. But it can also be used as a pedagogical activity tool by teachers, who will then be able to help students to make the work and projects carried out during their course visible when looking for an internship or job.

Where are you in terms of completing this initiative?

Since September 2019, we have been establishing the competency framework for digital professions. This was the subject of a concerted three-stage construction approach combining data from URCA's educational engineering, interviews with professionals in the field and analysis of sector frameworks. It has been approved by professionals in the digital sector.

Consult the framework

What are the prospects for the future?

The next step is to help teachers to get started with this framework using the Moodle platform. From December 2019, we will organise support for voluntary lessons in the use of these tools. Support will be provided from December to May.

We hope to get user feedback on the use of the three tools from this support: the competency framework, the competencies option in Moodle and the Mahara e-portfolio. This will be an opportunity for us to get information on the activities set up in Moodle to approve skills, promote student projects, and facilitate use of the framework.

Incidentally, the group of "tester" teachers is being formed and those interested can still come forward.

In charge of the initiative

Emmanuelle LECLERCQ
Lecturer and postdoctoral accreditation to supervise research in Sociology
CEREP (EA 4692) laboratory
Responsible for the integration support assignment
Professional Bachelor’s Degree pedagogy, HR and Payroll Director
IUT in Reims - GEA department

Operational initiative manager:

Caroline PETIT
DUNE EOLE project manager
University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Digital Department

This work benefited from state aid managed by the National Research Agency as part of the Investments for the Future programme under reference ANR-16-DUNE-0001-EOLE.