Academic and Employability Skills: A Self-Reflection Report

This report delves into the critical aspects of academic and employability skills, emphasizing their significance in career readiness. It highlights the skills acquired, including communication, teamwork, presentation, learning, time management, and self-management. The report explores the challenges encountered during the course, such as difficulties with blended learning, poor communication, lack of practical assessment, and time constraints. It also outlines the strategies adopted to overcome these obstacles, such as flexibility, problem-solving, time management, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. The author reflects on the importance of these skills in navigating future career challenges and fostering personal and professional development. The report stresses the need for continuous self-assessment and the development of problem-solving skills to enhance learning and career prospects.

ACADEMIC AND
EMPLOYABILITY
SKILLS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAINBODY....................................................................................................................................1
1. What you have learned in the module.....................................................................................1
2. The specific skills you have acquired.....................................................................................2
3. What difficulties you encountered in the study of the module and what in your estimation
caused them.................................................................................................................................3
4. How were you able to overcome the difficulties and what strategies you found helpful?.....4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Employability skills is being considered to be personal quality that an individual has
learnt in his/her academic period of time that brand one employable. However, to be career
ready, students needs to focus on academic skills because one deficiency in workplace can be
overcome by developing academic skills that is learnt from the classroom (Aliu and Aigbavboa,
2019). The purpose of this report is to recognise academic and employability skills a student
need to learn his/her academic course. Moreover, this report also present the major skills I had
learnt during my course, apart from that I am also pointing out various issues and obstacles
which I had faced during my course and measures I have adopted to overcome these obstacles.
MAINBODY
1. What you have learned in the module
In my sessions, I had learnt something new every time with new module, to be able to put
my experience in feelings I had learnt certain employability and academic skills that would
support me while working in a company. In my sessions I had realise that academic skills are as
useful as some other skills like technical skills because academic skills like speaking, writing,
reading and mathematics skills. However, I have realise that deficiency in academic skills could
leverage adverse impact on an individual personality (Bhagra and Sharma, 2018). In context to
employability skills, through seminar and discussion on communication skills on week 2 of my
course I realised what important role does communication skills play in employee life, from this
session, I m working hard on developing my communication skills that is considered to be basic
core skills in employability skills development. Apart from that, I have realised that a employee
need to work in team in order to achieve strategical goals of the employees this is thus, from my
next week session of Team work development, I have acquired some knowledge about the
significance of team work for a organisation and why an individual should have collaborative
skills to shine with company's goals. In my business management and administration course I
used a extent of graphs and tables to prove the hypothesis being tested, with this session I was
understanding the importance of academic skills of numeracy for quantitative research
assessment (Byrne, 2020). Besides these skills I see the comments that my Teacher puts onto my
coursework as I experience that they will help me to improve my marks and learning. I try to use
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that advice in my next pieces of coursework, therefore from his step I realised the importance of
ability to learn and adopt in order to attain future growth opportunities.
2. The specific skills you have acquired.
I have found that many graduate are unemployed or find trouble to find work due to lack
of employability skills with basic academic skills in their educated and interested skills.
Therefore, to face off this situation I have acquired various kills which are as follows- Communication skills- From our seminar and discussion on communication skills, I
have realise that communication is the core and most crucial employability skills in the
modern era business because communication is the primary part of every job. I have
learnt that excellent communication skills can make me more effective employee in a
business and also provide me future growth opportunities. I was working hard on my
communication skills, when I am part of a debate, I am effectively presenting my
thoughts, views and opinion just with the help of my communication and interpersonal
skills greatly (Cotronei-Baird, 2020). Team work skills- In one of my group project, I have found that there is so much conflict
and misunderstanding just because of me because, I was not putting my 100% efforts to
work due to having different discipline background people in group. With my class
coursework, I have develop my team work skills by working well with other team
member of diversify backgrounds. I have developed my team spirit to a that level that I
always put “we” instead of “me”, apart from that for boosting my team work skills, I am
volunteering to help my co-member for the accomplishment of group objectives. Presentation skills- Presentation skills are those skills which an employee need in
delivering engaging and impressive presentation in front of variety of people. For
delivering effective presentation, I have developed a prior tone of voice and body action
that would help me for engaging my target audience. Learning skills- A person who has learning skills can counter many future challenges,
apart from that one can learn new method easily. I always read my teacher feedback and
working on those feedback to improve my performance and reasoning capability
(Espinoza and et.al, 2020). Graduate student after switching from scholar to worker often
need to learn various skills thus, learning new skills is advantage for me to succeed in
career.
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 Time management & self-management skills- Time is valuable and precious in youth
life because one who utilise time can succeed because it is found that stitch in time saves
nine. I rank my different task and give more time to precious activity in order to get more
output of my efforts in a little time. Time management also supports me for self-
management because I need little support or supervision for my group project. In learning
time management skills additionally I m also learning and understanding the organising
and planning skills which is most significant skills in emolyability.
3. What difficulties you encountered in the study of the module and what in your estimation
caused them
In study of my module I have often encountered with variety of issues both on regular
and initial phase. One of the issue is regarding blended learning system which sometime creates
trouble to manage things on a right time on right track. However, I expected to learn certain
skills from the module online for self study, but my estimation gone wrong as I have slow
internet connectivity that creates so much trouble in viewing and playing a module. Poor
network connectivity in turn result to the inconvenience in online presentation where due to
stable network issue I can not give proper presentation (Menz, 2020).
I have bad habit of listening, this impact my communication skills in many ways, I have
often put my opinion before listening to tutor in the module, this result in low score in oral
assessment. Moreover, in our group project, lack of trust of member and no information sharing
resulted in failure of the submission of the project on giving deadline. I was blamed for this
failure because I do not communicate proper guideline of the module to the team member. I
estimated that the all people have relevant information regarding the project and this cause
failure of group work (Sarkar and et.al, 2020).
However, all the module which I have studied are more useful in many ways but common
drawback of these module is lack of practical assessment. I only learnt theoretical knowledge of
various skills for example, I learnt more about leadership style and role in module but due to lack
of practical assessment it is being quite difficult for me to put theoretical knowledge into actions.
Moreover, timing of module are very fast which cause missing some module because I estimated
that take notes from module but due to fast speed of module I miss lots of subject matter
sometimes. Although each and every module have all applicable facts and definition, but they are
quite boring and unrealistic without a case study or report assessment.
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Other personal issue I face in study of module is regarding experiencing low motivation
this is because theoretical knowledge are boring with practical assessment and more there are too
many distraction in study of the module arise because I estimated that learning through blogs
would be useful which some time so social media message plug-in that not only distract but are
also lacking my concentration of study of the module (Sin, Tavares and Amaral, 2019). Other
major issue I experience in study of module is lack of right resources on right time, I often do not
have laptop and remember my login credentials.
4. How were you able to overcome the difficulties and what strategies you found helpful?
In context to above mentioned difficulties, I have taken several measures to overcome
these issue. To overcome problem of blended learning, I am adopting flexibility of resource and
time management strategies in order to increase my engagement in module study. However
necessity is cause of invention, to manage expenses of low network connectivity, I bought Wi-Fi
voucher that assist me in seamless study of the module (Skoyles, Bullock and Neville, 2019).
Every problem has a solution it just need one to have problem-solving skills. To counter various
issues regarding study of module, I have developed my problem-solving skills which support me
to increase my motivation in study and enhance my learning skills. For daily issues like
theoretical framework of module, I have learnt new study skills by asking practical implications
question in classroom, increase my vocabulary and participating in seminar and discussion.
Time-management is answer of all the trouble, I have adopted time management skills to
overcome my issue regarding having right resources on right time. To contrast with issues, I
have developed critical thinking skills which is also considered to be part of employer skills in
which I brake down theoretical knowledge in small parts and made practical assumptions. Self
incentive is a core strategy or a skills which I found useful in overcoming issue in learning skills,
I have opted to incentive to solve my communication skills by participating in debates and
seminar presentation so, that I can remove my stage phobia and develop my communication and
listening skills (Sotiriadou, Logan, Daly and Guest, 2020). Individual who is effective in
organising and planning tends to achieve much better results, I have organised my lecture in
more flexible manner that I can study them whenever I want or willing to do so. I wrote down
my activities for developing skills in planner and ranked them so that I can acquire initial skill
that need to be learn first.
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Development of team work spirit is most useful skills I found for completing group
module task. Therefore, to develop effective team work skills, I valued the diversity and
difference so that trust can built among the group member in order to achieve group goals
effectively within the given deadline. However, while working in team, more knowledge is
spread. Often, I found difficulty to apply my academic skills in practical due to emotion for
example while learning for a certain skills of leadership, I found it is impossible for me to be
autocratic leader, so in order to subdue this issue, I have adopted emotional intelligence skills in
which I manage, understand and use my emotions in a positive style (Suleman, 2018) .
CONCLUSION
From the dynamic of study, it has been identified that academic and employability skills
are matter of career-ready employable because these skills supports an individual to counterpart
future challenges and road blocker in career growth and development. However, employability
skills are commonly known as a set of soft-skills and academic skills are kind of hard skills that
helps a graduate to face deficiency of job like writing, pronouncing and numeracy. However, it
has been identified that keeping a diary of study of module would help a student to learn more
and improve the issue which they encountered during their academic that would help them to
learn problem-solving skills that would useful for them for life-course.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Aliu, J. and Aigbavboa, C.O., 2019. Employers’ perception of employability skills among built-
environment graduates. Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology.
Bhagra, A. and Sharma, D.K., 2018. Changing paradigm of employability skills in the global
business world: A review. IUP Journal of Soft Skills. 12(2). pp.7-24.
Byrne, C., 2020. What determines perceived graduate employability? Exploring the effects of
personal characteristics, academic achievements and graduate skills in a survey
experiment. Studies in higher education. pp.1-18.
Cotronei-Baird, V.S., 2020. Academic hindrances in the integration of employability skills
development in teaching and assessment practice. Higher Education. 79(2). pp.203-223.
Espinoza, O., and et.al., 2020. Should universities train teachers for employability or for
effectiveness?. Teaching and Teacher Education. 88. p.102960.
Menz, M., 2020. Integrating Academic Skills and Employability-Revisiting the Learning
Journal. Journal of Research in Higher Education. 4(2).
Sarkar, M., and et.al., 2020. Academics’ perspectives of the teaching and development of generic
employability skills in science curricula. Higher Education Research &
Development. 39(2). pp.346-361.
Sin, C., Tavares, O. and Amaral, A., 2019. Accepting employability as a purpose of higher
education? Academics’ perceptions and practices. Studies in Higher Education, 44(6),
pp.920-931.
Skoyles, A., Bullock, N. and Neville, K., 2019. Developing Employability Skills Workshops for
Students’ Higher Education Achievement Reports. New Review of Academic
Librarianship. 25(2-4). pp.190-217.
Sotiriadou, P., Logan, D., Daly, A. and Guest, R., 2020. The role of authentic assessment to
preserve academic integrity and promote skill development and employability. Studies
in Higher Education. 45(11). pp.2132-2148.
Suleman, F., 2018. The employability skills of higher education graduates: insights into
conceptual frameworks and methodological options. Higher Education. 76(2). pp.263-
278.
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