Via the lens of graduate attribute development this toolkit highlights best examples of employability activities for higher education curriculum. Designed to enhance employability skills development as class activities and module assessments, namely via the Employability Superfoods, lecturers can enhance students’ employability learning with ease.
Benefit of this resource and how to make the best use of it
Our Award-Winning Embedding Employability Toolkit has been designed to help you, the lecturer, create curricula beneficial to graduates’ employment health. Much like a nutrient-rich superfood considered to be especially beneficial for health and well-being, the 20+ Employability Superfoods activities developed for this toolkit will help you present a curriculum that is agile and adaptive to labour market trends and contemporary workplace requirements.
How to Use Superfoods:
The Employability Superfoods outline detailed stepwise workings, resources and downloads to ensure your preparation time is minimum when deciding to embed employability into curricula. Resources relate to links, library documents, and searchable and downloadable documents, webpages or videos. What’s more, they will show you how to embed employability via the lens of graduate attribute development in readily accessible and fun ways.
You may draw on the Employability Superfoods as classroom activities, assessments, and work-integrated learning preparation. The Employability Superfoods perform as templates to inspire you to adapt to the subject-specific knowledge required of your module and programme.
The Employability Superfoods are connected to our graduate attribute capstones and sub-attributes via our capstones: Practical, Communicative, Collaborative and Confident. At DkIT we have consulted a wide range of stakeholders and the consensus is that when twinned with innovative pedagogy, these graduate-attribute initiatives produce outstanding graduate employees.
Interactive Tools:
A set of employability tools are included in the toolkit. You may download the following interactive aids to help your workings: the 10-dot Matrix to measure employability embedding for an activity or assessment, and module; a Lecturer’s Graduate Attribute Tracker; a Career Guidance Counsellor’s tool set; and two Student Graduate Attribute Workbooks to aid you and your students in assessing how your learning outcomes and assessments enhance the development of capstone and sub-attributes more specific to employability. Indeed, the graduate attribute tracker may be directed for use for upcoming programme reviews.
We hope you enjoy the benefits of this toolkit and would encourage you to share your thoughts with our Community of Practice contacts that you’ll find there.
*AHECS 2022 National Award Winner – ‘Supporting Student & Graduate Employability’
?
This citation is automatically generated and may require adjustment. Always verify it against your style guide.
Staunton, C. (2022). Embedding employability toolkit: superfoods to boost your curriculum’s employability in higher education. National Resource Hub (Ireland). Retrieved from: https://hub.teachingandlearning.ie/resource/embedding-employability-toolkit-superfoods-to-boost-your-curriculums-employability-in-higher-education/ License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC).
Adapting this resource? Share your version!
If you have modified or adopted this resource, share your version here. Tracking adaptations helps us measure impact and connects others with useful updates.
This poster offers educators an overview of designing a syllabus on the Canvas learning management system that supports personalised learning pathways. It highlights (1) a gamified pedagogy grounded in gaming principles and (2) adaptive learning strategies using MasteryPaths.
In 2018, the Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick launched Leganto, a reading list management tool designed to streamline access to academic resources for students. Leganto ensures equitable access to academic content, helping students engage with reliable sources and easing their transition into university-level study.
This toolkit draws on our experiences facilitating a SATLE-funded community-engaged learning project that brought students of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (UCC) together with people in Cork seeking international protection for a series of three wellbeing and creativity workshops.
The HEA Education for Sustainable Development Spotlight Series 2025: Case Studies Compendium brings together 115 case studies from higher education institutions across Ireland. It showcases how universities and colleges are integrating sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals into teaching, research, curriculum design, assessment practices and community engagement. It offers a comprehensive picture of national ESD activity and provides an accessible resource for educators and policymakers seeking examples of practice-based innovation.
