Individual User, Academic Advisor, Departmental, and Instructor Use

Student Use
By creating a user profile, students can use the employable skills assessment to determine and then monitor their skill-confidence progress. Initially, students can self-assess their level of confidence in the types of skills that are valued in the workplace. Based on the provided feedback and the curricular and applied opportunities available at their institution, students can then develop a plan for strengthening these important skills. Students can retake this assessment so they can track their skill development as they implement their plans.

This tool may also help students simply identify the skills they are developing while in college as students often fail to recognize this type of learning (Martini et al., 2015). By completing this assessment, students will be more aware of the variety of marketable skills they are developing. This will help students promote their acquired skill-confidence to potential employers, internship sites, and graduate programs, and be especially reassuring for students who are uncertain of their specific career goals.

Department Use
Psychology departments may use the empirical evidence collected from the employable skills assessment to identify opportunities for curricular or programmatic improvement. Psychology departments could evaluate beliefs in skill development within the major by assessing students at various points in the curriculum (each semester or yearly) then use this information to make curricular improvements for students to facilitate skill confidence. This can be facilitated by requesting batch data collection. {More instructions or a link here}.

Departments could also engage in comparisons of students’ confidence in their employable skills within a program at different levels or through different coursework taken. Psychology departments may further use the outcome data from this assessment to recruit students into the major by presenting empirical evidence of the skill confidence developed in the major. Departments could also use data from the employable skills assessment to reassure skeptical parents about their student’s confidence that they are acquiring important and marketable skills while earning an undergraduate degree in psychology.

Faculty Classroom Use
Faculty that wish to facilitate and monitor skill confidence development in their individual classes can use the employable skills assessment as a tool in a variety of ways. They can use the assessment to test the effectiveness of a new skill-building exercise or class activity in strengthening students’ skills self-efficacy. They could also use the employable skills assessment to do a pre/post assessment of their class at the beginning and end of the semester to determine how students’ confidence in their skills have shifted through course exposure. The results could empirically support learning outcomes for the course or provide feedback for improvements that need to be made. In both circumstances, faculty can request batch data be collected. {More instructions or a link here}.

If teaching a career preparation class or an introduction to the major course, the employable skills assessment could be integrated into a class assignment. The instructor could request for students to take the assessment, download their report, and use their scores and advice received to create a professional development plan based on available coursework and opportunities at their given institutions. If the students create a user profile, the instructor can encourage them to reassess their progress at a future point in their academic careers.

Advisor or Career Counselor Use
Academic advisors that wish to focus on skill development with their advisees could use the employable skills assessment as a tool to determine baseline skill levels, as well as progress toward skill development goals over time. Advisors should request for their advisees to create user profiles and take the skill assessment. Once completed, they should download and save their reports to share with their advisors. Based on the scores received and advice given in the report, the advisors and advisees can work collaboratively to create personalized professional development plans based on available coursework and opportunities at their given institutions. After a designated period, the advisees could reassess their skill confidence and determine their progress based on original scores stored in their user profiles.