As some of you may know, TRACK is a suite of web apps to help students, academics, course designers and working professionals understand how skills, studying and careers intersect. Here’s the latest news on this exciting project!
Some UTS students know what they want to be, but don’t know what they need to study to get to their goal. Others know what they’re interested in or good at but can’t quite work out how to link subject choices to potential career outcomes. TRACK can help students to make the good decisions that will help them land their dream jobs.
A major milestone was reached this month when two cohorts of students took part in a pilot study of TRACK; first year undergraduate Public Relations students studying Ecology of Public Communication, and first year postgraduates on the Master of Data Science & Innovation, studying Data Science for Innovation.
In the undergraduate cohort there were over 150 students who created profiles; added skills, courses and researched jobs and job market data. They were encouraged to think about topics they had covered during the semester and aspects that had sparked their interest for a potential future career. This was paired with activities set by UTS Careers that had students thinking proactively and in groups to help design each other’s paths to achieve their dream careers. These activities encouraged the students to shift their thinking toward a more future-focused perspective to help identify future goals, and work towards them. Overall, students expressed favourable reviews of TRACK, and plans are now under way to engage the cohort with TRACK in their second-year and ultimately in their third-year capstone subject.
The TRACK Team has also been working with Course Designers whose courses are up for re-accreditation, to ensure the skills being taught in the program align with the skills that industry is seeking. Getting students career ready is the aim of every course, and with the fast-changing demands of industry, it is important to maintain the pace and momentum of change. Using the database from Burning Glass, which contains over 17,000 skills extracted from job advertisements worldwide, TRACK is a great resource for Course Coordinators to use as support to their design process.
FutureTRACK is a special edition designed to assist enterprises identify skill shortages and upskill their staff. After diagnosing the skills gaps in the workforce, TRACK suggests short courses for staff to undertake to close their skills gap towards careers they’re interested in. Learn more about UTS Enterprise Learning services and reach out to their team for a demo.
What’s under the hood? Learn more about the leading edge research underpinning TRACK from the teams in CIC and our colleagues across the road in Engineering & IT.