From employability attributes to professional identity: students transitioning to the workplace

In order to realize the employment ambitions of graduates we can work with students to facilitate the construction of their identity as members of a global engineering profession. Of particular interest is whether ( and, if so, how) students reconstruct their identity through the delivery of modules specifically designed to increase students' employability attributes and widen their horizons. In preparing students for life beyond university, a new module has been developed, Professional Identity through Portfolio Development, designed for final year creative computing students to support the transition from university to employment. Findings suggest that while only 61% of students strongly identified themselves with their chosen profession before undertaking the module, this increased to 73% of participants at the end of the module. The module, in its examination of identity and next steps, appears to have also impacted on the strength of student identity with 65% expressing a strong student identity before the course, increasing to 88% after the course. This paper explores the findings of the research and considers the possibility of generalisability.