'Students-as-partners' scheme enhances postgraduate students' employability skills while addressing gaps in bioinformatics education

Training undergraduate research assistants with an outcome-oriented and skill-based mentoring strategy

It is found that research mentoring of undergraduate students can result in meaningful contributions to scientific disciplines. Here, an outcome-oriented, skill-based mentoring strategy is proposed and evaluated in the context of the CASP14 community challenge.

Effective mentoring of undergraduate students is a growing requirement for the promotion of faculty at many universities. It is often challenging for young investigators to define a successful mentoring strategy, partially due to the absence of a broadly accepted definition of what mentoring should entail. To overcome this, an outcome-oriented mentoring framework was developed and used with more than 25 students over three years. It was found that a systematic mentoring approach can help students quickly realize their scientific potential and result in meaningful contributions to science. This report especially shows how the Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP14) challenge was used to amplify student research efforts. As a result of this challenge, multiple publications, presentations and scholarships were awarded to the participating students. The mentoring framework continues to see much success in allowing undergraduate students, including students from underrepresented groups, to foster scientific talent and make meaningful contributions to the scientific community.

A structured reflective process supports student awareness of employability skills development in a science placement module

Placements are often an extra‐curricular activity of a science degree. This study reports on the outcomes of a final‐year credit‐bearing 6‐week placement module that was specifically designed to develop and enhance students’ employability skills. A key element of this module was that the student placements were not only evaluated from a science perspective, but also evaluated with an emphasis on meaningful reflection and evaluation of employability skills development. Students recorded their levels of confidence in skills before, during and after the placement via an Online Reflective Log, as part of a module’s summative assessment. The results showed that taking part in the placement and conducting their own independent research helped students to make connections between their scientific knowledge, otherwise constrained within the walls of the undergraduate science laboratory, and the wider impact of their research on society. Another theme that emerged concerned career choices and aspirations, and the placement experiences either confirmed prior choices or opened new horizons. The Online Reflective Log helped students to feel supported by their university supervisor who were at a distance. Feedback on their tasks prompted students to reflect on the scientific and personal skills while being engaged in scientific activities during placement. Students agreed that they had further developed their employability skills during the placement and acknowledged that it was challenging to acquire evidence of skill development. However, students appreciated the usefulness of this reflection in relation to their future career development.

What enables doctoral degree holders to get a job? A journey through doctoral students' satisfaction with educational services

Purpose

Doctoral degrees are generally the highest level of education provided by educational institutions in Western countries. Nevertheless, doctoral degree holders – i.e. Philosophiae Doctors (PhDs) – struggle to find a job that matches their knowledge and expertise. This article investigates the effects that PhDs' satisfaction with different attributes of educational services has on their ability to obtain employment either in academia or outside it.

Design/methodology/approach

Secondary data were accessed from a nationwide survey performed in Italy between February and July 2014. More than 16,000 people who achieved a doctoral degree between January 2008 and December 2010 were involved in the analysis. The four-years' time-span was justified by the need to avoid potential biases produced by a short time lapse between data collection and the awarding of the respondents' doctoral degree. A logistic regression model was designed to shed light on the relationship between doctoral degree holders' satisfaction and their ability to find employment.

Findings

This study results suggested that the attributes of educational services had varying effects on the doctoral degree holders' ability to obtain work. More specifically, the perceived quality of research and methodological courses delivered by educational institutions and the quality of the technologies and digital resources available at the host university were found to positively affect the ability of doctoral degree holders to get a job in academia. Conversely, the satisfaction with the quality of the teaching activities was positively related to the doctoral degree holders' employability outside academia.

Practical implications

The quality of educational services provided to students attending a doctoral degree course affects their ability to find work. Enhancing the quality of educational services may reduce the risk of unemployment amongst doctoral degree holders.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, few attempts have been made to investigate the interplay between the quality of educational services and doctoral degree holders' employability.