Abintegro, the online career development platform, today announced the release of the Abintegro Online Employability Index, measuring the employability effort within 72 higher education institutions in 2016, based on 1.1 million activities from 112,000 students.
The employability agenda is of crucial significance to any institution, impacting on student recruitment, retention and satisfaction, and graduate outcomes.
The Online Employability Index analyses all 1.1 million activities within the Abintegro career development platform, by tracking the digital footprint of 112,000 students accessing the platform. It compares the engagement of students when it comes to employability and the level of activities completed by students.
The results reveal that top quartile institutions have double the average student engagement rate, with the top 5 institutions having in excess of 40% of their students completing employability activity online. When compared to the average, top quartile institutions also have:
- 300% higher levels of activity focussed on high impact employability tasks (e.g. completing an eLearning course on teamwork as opposed to watching an advisory video)
- Double the volume of employability activities completed, often as a result of pre-configured tasks being set for students as part of an Award or other recognised scheme
- Double the volume of logins per student, usually as the outcome of year-long employability programmes as opposed to occasional interventions
The results are invaluable for understanding how to boost student employability, and the institutional data can be important evidence for TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework), allowing institutions to demonstrate their commitment to employability.
Commenting on the results, David Heard, Commercial Director, said:
“It is fantastic to see the effort all higher education institutions put into employability development. Sitting face-to-face with students to teach essential career skills will always remain a vital role for professionals within institutions. The release of the Online Employability Index is a big step forward in being able to provide evidence of all the previously uncaptured effort students put into developing their employability online”.
The next version of the Online Employability Index will be released in June, measuring the first 6 months of 2017.
