News Archive

50 up for Reading's Career Management Skills programme – University of Reading

When the Careers Service at Anglia Polytechnic University purchased the University of Reading's award winning Career Management Skills (CMS) programme they became the 50th Higher Education Institute in the UK and the Republic of Ireland to buy the online careers education programme. Professor Gordon Marshall, Reading’s Vice-Chancellor, said: ’What's becoming clear is that the University of Reading's Career Management Skills programme has a major contribution to make in helping institutions address graduate employability.’ The decision to sell the programme was taken just over two years ago. It has been purchased by different types of Universities such as research-based ones: Sheffield, Warwick, York, Bristol and Essex Universities. New Universities have also brought heavily into the system including Oxford Brookes, Coventry and the University of the West of England. Other purchasers have included Cornwall College and the Glasgow College of Printing. ’It's been quite a year,’ said the Careers Advisory Service's Director, Shauna van den Bos. ’It began with the programme winning two national awards, including the prestigious Careers Service's Unit (CSU, now Graduate Prospects) website of the year Award. The programme continues to sell strongly and there is interest in CMS from mainland Europe.’ Many of the purchasers stress the flexibility of the system. At Reading CMS all undergraduates undertake the programme primarily in their second year as an assessed part of their degree. Other universities have used the materials in different ways. For example, it has been used as part of a non-assessed careers education programme and some Careers Services have produced their own modules on decision making and problem solving to supplement those they get as part of the programme. Mary Sweeney, from the University of Limerick, said: ’We’ve been using the Reading CMS package in the University of Limerick for over a year and have been very satisfied both with the quality of the material and the support service provided by University of Reading CAS. ’One of the most attractive features of this package is the ability to adapt the material to suit the particular needs of our own students. We have customised the material to form the basis of an online Career Development module that helps students and as part of their overall career education. ’In all cases, students found the online material to be very accessible and relevant to their career interests. It would have required a significant investment of our time and money to develop a similar package ourselves. ’The Reading CMS model has enabled us to improve the services we offer to our students by providing a very customised career development programme which can be adapted for the needs of different groups.’ Reading's Career Management Skills programme is an on-line careers education programme designed by the University of Reading Careers Advisory Service that is co-delivered with staff from academic departments using extensive prepared resources. It consists of three parts. Firstly, it looks at individual self-awareness and team working skills, it then moves on to help students locate where the opportunities that they might be interested in are available and how to find them and finally the programme looks at how to make effective applications. Each part of the programme consists of two-hour taught sessions, on-line exercises and short assignments. END For further information and a photograph of a session of the Career Management Skills in action at the University of Reading, please contact: Carey Widdows, Deputy Director, Careers Advisory Service, University of Reading. Tel: 0118 3788358 Fax: 0118 3788355 E-mail: c.widdows@rdg.ac.uk http://www.rdg.ac.uk/careers You can view sample pages and find out more about CMS at: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/careers/cmsdemo