1. EE2012
September 17th – 20th 2012
E-mentoring for employability
Dr Andrea Wheeler, Professor Simon Austin and
Professor Jacqui Glass
The Centre for Engineering & Design Education, 1st Floor, Keith Green Building
School of Civil and Building Engineering

2. Outline
• My paper describes the work of an HEA Departmental Grant with the
School of Civil and Building Engineering.
• Examines theories of employability
• Through narratives of mentees and mentors involved in the first pilot
programme examines notions of employability and explores
internationalisation to ask we can provide in e-mentoring programmes a
virtual space for students to discover the capabilities they need to live
the lives they value.

3. Context and statistics
• 5.1% reduction in graduate employment.
• Recent graduates are more likely to work in a lower skilled job
than ten years ago.
• Figures show that nearly 36% are employed in a lower skilled job
compared with 26.7% in 2001 (the Graduates in the Labour
Market 2012 report published by the Office for National
Statistics).

4. Even at PhD level…students without relevant
experience.
I really have worries about my post PhD life because I would like to be
involved with industry, but suddenly feel like I am a fresh university graduate
(even after getting PhD!). There is so much uncertainty, and if I am being
honest some lack of confidence on my part (Loughborough University, School
of Civil and Building Engineering, International PhD Student 2011).

5. Educational theories: Employability in
Engineering
• Engagement with employers. The Government White Paper
Higher Education: Students at the heart of the system (BIS, 2011)
states the need for employer engagement and similarly the
Wilson Review (Wilson, ed., 2009) recommends that Universities
work more with employers.
• The new graduate engineer needs new skills. The Royal
Academy of Engineering (RAE) 2010 report Engineering
Graduates for Industry states businesses have also stressed the
new and distinct roles engineers now play in businesses: ‘…the
technical specialist imbued with expert knowledge; …the
integrator.. operating across boundaries in complex
environments; and ... the change agent providing the
creativity, innovation and leadership necessary to meet new
challenges’ (RAE, 2007).

6. Theorists of employability
Apollo Research Institute. Tracey Wilen-Daugenti: Employees want to stay
relevant, and educators need to prepare the next-generation workforce. HEA
Sector (US). In Society 3.0: How Technology is Reshaping Education, Work, and
Society (January 2012) she argues HEIs needs to assess the intersection of
technology, education, and business. – what this means for new graduates.
In Future Work Skills 2020, a study by the Institute for the Future, for Apollo
Research Institute (2011), she identifies 10 key skills new graduates and current
workers will need to stay competitive.
New skills they identify:
1. "transdisciplinarity" (understanding concepts across multiple disciplines),
2. "virtual collaboration" (proficiency in working as part of geographically
dispersed teams),
3. "cross-cultural competency" (ability to operate in multicultural settings).
4. “Social intelligence” (workers who can build collegial and productive online
relationships will be in high demand). “As organizations expand globally, social
intelligence will help managers build virtual workgroups comprising the right
blend of talent and personalities,” Dr. Wilen-Daugenti says.
Other skills include:
Sense making; novel and adaptive thinking; design mindset; new media
literacy; computational thinking, cognitive load management

8. Growing Internationalisation of the HE
Environment
• The problem of internationalisation in HE, as cited within literature is, however, a rather
fluid concept. It may refer to very different problems:
• “Intercultural competence”, the ability to communicate those working in or from
different cultures – free from prejudice and motivated to continued learning: A set of
cognitive, behavioural, and affective/motivational components that enable individuals
to adapt effectively in intercultural environments.
• “Transnational education”, whilst this may refer to the growing numbers of
international students who go abroad for a combination of reasons such as career
advancement, quality of education, immigration or the experience of living abroad.
There are a number of international students who want career advancement and
quality of education, without having to go very far from home (hence the birth of
satellite campus)
• or equally the “Bologna process” and its potential for student mobility.
• How students understand themselves and building upon their employability from their
own life experience and background.

9. • Developing employability and intercultural competence isn’t
just about skill (or indeed HEIs identifying skills needed).
• The impact of social and cultural capital is well know:
graduates from working class backgrounds are less likely to
know how to “work the system” (James Rhem, 1998)
• Developing ‘soft skills’, personal qualities and dispositions –
easier for some than others?
• Students often don’t know what they want their working
lives to be.

10. Educational theory and CAPABILITY
Put simply, the capability approach is about
freedom and the development of an environment
suitable for human flourishing. Capability refers to
what people are actually able to be and do, rather
than to what resources they have access to. It
focuses on developing people’s capability to
choose a life that they have reason to value.
Freedom and capabilities cannot be separated. The
opportunities to develop capabilities and the
process of deciding collectively on valuable
capabilities both require and produce freedom
(Walker, 2004, 104).
Profoundly student centred approach to employability…

11. CAPABILITY IN EDUCATION
The capabilities approach focuses on what each and every person is able
to do and be, their ‘valuable doings and beings’, in making meaningful
choices from a range of options [...] The notion of ‘reason to value’ is
important, pointing as it does to reflective, informed choices. At issue for
critical and democratic forms of educational action research is that Sen’s
capability approach offers an approach to evaluating social
(and, hence, educational) advantage, in which expanding people’s agency
and freedom is held to be central. In this approach, an individual's
capabilities to undertake valued and valuable activities constitutes an
indispensable and central part of the evidence for our judgements, arrived
at through an educational action research process about how well they are
doing (Walker, M. 2004, 104).
Walker, M and Elaine Unterhalter eds., (2010) Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach
and Social Justice in Education. Palgrave Macmillan

12. E-mentoring research
1. The tension a capabilities approach defines - within the scope of an e-
mentoring programme - is whether students have the freedom to achieve
those functionings’ (ambitions) that they value?
2. Are there new ways thinking about employability emerging from a
changing HE community – from students, academic and industry
collaborators - demanding curriculum support from HE; and do e-mentoring
schemes provide a testing ground for the discovery of this need for change?

13. The E-MENTORING Pilot : “Improving Student
Employability Through E-Mentoring”.
(February 2012 – June 2012)
• Awarded HEA Departmental Grant
• Recruited mentors and mentees. Mentors were
young, 2- 7 years post qualification. Mentees
from the School of Civil and Building
Engineering (without placement experience).
• Invited to a launch meeting to meet
mentors/mentees and have some training (all
online).
• Left to get on with it. Some emails. Some
invitations to feedback via online
questionnaires.
• June – August interviews.
• September, review of programme and revision
ahead of pilot 2.

14. Aims:
• examine the changing skills needed by graduates joining Industry;
• explore the employment benefits of e-mentoring schemes for undergraduate
and postgraduate students;
• pilot and refine e-mentoring processes;
• develop sustainable implementation plans for undergraduate and graduate
programmes at Loughborough University, and;
• create a tool-kit for the adoption of e-mentoring by other Universities and
other disciplines.
Outputs:
• A project web-site to provide guidance to participants and to disseminate
findings and outputs, and;
• An overview publication about implementing mentoring through use of
technology, which describes experiences, lessons learned and the resulting
effective practice.

16. Narratives and experience
MENTEES (interviews carried out by summer
intern) Benefits?
What did they talk about? CVs Job Applications The UK working
environment
How did they feel about it? Generally positive
Successes and failures? Some – it was the first pilot

17. Narratives and experience
MENTEES (interviews carried out by summer
intern) Benefits?
Mentees:
…things that really stand out for me are that at this level after Masters when we go
back home we’re going to be more of manager’s than technical people. People
management, which is a very difficult thing, working with big groups, I’ve learnt a
couple of things about that. The thing I’ve learnt is about strategies, this was
completely new to me, you know. Every business, everything in life, there’s a strategy.
You need to know where you want to go and have some sort of plan to get there.
Before we just used to wake up and do things and get there.
Discussions are generally about the experiences gained in the industry and guidelines
and tips on how to be successful in industry. The way things are done in the
construction industry in Ghana and UK were discussed and compared.

18. Narratives and experience
MENTEES (interviews carried out by summer
intern) Benefits?
Discussions to date had been about: How do you organise a large business; what
procedures do you need to put in place when planning/running a big project; the
qualities of a good manager; how is knowledge shared within large organisations; and
continuous development of staff within industry and whose responsibility it is.
I used to supervise new graduates in my workplace as well and one of the
problems new graduates face is that they get shocked at the new challenge *…+
working under pressure and it helps when someone tells you how he is so busy
and so under pressure and then those issues prepare a fresh graduate for the
future.

19. Narratives and experience
MENTORS
Our initial conversations were a bit of an ice breaker discussing both my
background and Linda’s (name changed). We discussed the path Linda had
followed to go to University and what she expected from a career in civil
engineering. We also discussed her academic strengths and weaknesses.
Following on from that Linda arranged a sponsorship interview with a
construction company, so we discussed in great detail CV’s including going
through some of my own older ones and my and Linda’s current CV’s . We then
talked about what it’s like to be an interviewer *…+ We have also discussed
some of the coursework and lab projects…
See William Bancroft (2012) “E-mentoring for
employability” POSTER PRESENTATION

20. Improvements for the second pilot
• Training
• Pairing
• Technology
• Relationships

21. ORIGINAL RESEARCH QUESTION…
Approaching Pilot 2
A question for mentees. The tension a capabilities approach defines -
within the scope of an e-mentoring programme - is whether students
have the freedom to achieve those functionings’ (ambitions) that they
value?
A question for mentors: Are there new ways thinking about
employability emerging from a changing HE community – from
students, academic and industry collaborators - demanding
curriculum support from HE; and do e-mentoring schemes provide a
testing ground for the discovery of this need for change?
21

22. Expanding the programme to other departments in the University.
The President of the ICE, Richard Coackley gave a lecture on the theme of
energy to the School of Civil and Building Engineering where he focused on
three areas of development for the engineering institution: harnessing new
sources of sustainable energy from natural resources; harnessing the skills and
talent of the UK’s engineers and future engineers; and harnessing the energy of
the ICE’s partnerships with industry and Government. Citing the HEA e-
mentoring project, he stated:
The e-mentoring pilot scheme, headed by Professor Simon Austin, links students
with construction professionals according to interest and career path to provide
the principles of traditional mentoring but exploiting the free and readily
available technologies of Skype, social media and e-mail to foster the awareness
of professional practice and the needs of employers. This is an excellent example
of harnessing the energy: with mentors using their time and energy to harness
and refine the energy of their mentees providing them with important
experience of industry. (Richard Coackley, 20th April 2012, Loughborough
University School of Civil and Building Engineering).

23. Dr Andrea Wheeler
Teaching and Learning Co-ordinator (Projects),
The Centre for Engineering & Design Education
a.s.wheeler@lboro.ac.uk
http://www.sustainability-and-schools.com