Educational Technology & Society 3(1) 2000 ISSN 1436-4522 41 ,QWHJUDWHG:HEEDVHGVXSSRUWIRUOHDUQLQJHPSOR\DELOLW\VNLOOV Janet Strivens B.A., M.A. Lecturer in Education Centre for Careers and Academic Practice University of Liverpool, Liverpool United Kingdom Tel: +44 151 794 4625 strivens@liv.ac.uk Simon Grant, Ph.D. Lecturer, Connect Centre Department of Computer Science University of Liverpool, Liverpool United Kingdom a@simongrant.org ABSTRACT Learners of employability skills have four needs: awareness of employers' skill requirements; knowledge of their own levels of skill achievement; the ability to provide evidence for these achievements; and help with the process of action planning. The perceptions of students who had engaged in the process of recording achievement and action planning prior to entering higher education confirms the need for support for this process. LUSID is a Web-based system for learners to record experiences and achievements, analyse them in terms of employability skills, and carry out related action planning. It uses a detailed characterisation of skills which helps to explain what is needed by the learners, and to guide them through the recording, audit and planning processes. LUSID's features address the identified needs in several ways, as well as providing a sound basis for further developments including closer access to employers' skill requirements, on-line testing of skills where realistic, and perhaps integration with recruitment through employers using an adapted system to input job requirements. Keywords Recording, Profiling, Skills, Employability, World Wide Web Requirements for learning employability skills Educational policy in Britain is currently laying great stress on lifelong learning (DfEE, 1998). This is in recognition of changes to the typical patterns of working life, which make more varied demands on an individual's skills (Harvey, 1997; Leeds Metropolitan University, 1996). One very important strand to this policy is the requirement for individual, self-directed learning. This is receiving attention at a number of different levels: the early development of skills to plan and improve one's own learning, motivational aspects of lifelong learning and the support systems for individual needs, particularly those which can continue to operate outside the context of a traditional educational institution. Coopers & Lybrand (1998) use the term 'employability skills' to include: 'traditional intellectual skills' (e.g. analysis, critical evaluation, logical argument, reasoning from evidence); 'the "new" core or key skills' (communication, application of number, information technology, teamwork, learning how to learn); 'personal attributes deemed to have market value' (e.g. self-reliance, adaptability, drive); and a knowledge of organisations and how they work. Individual learners may have a clear goal to maintain and update their employability skills, but they may not have all the means to do so. A coherent approach is needed which supports, encourages and motivates people in any walk of life to learn individually and to develop their employability skills, recognising the needs of learners outside as well as inside educational institutions. We suggest that this is best provided by an information and communication technology (ICT) framework which is coherent and accessible. Accessible in this case means both that the learners must have easy access to the technological means of interaction with systems which implement the framework, and that these systems must be designed for ease of use, reducing to the minimum obstacles to the novice ICT user. Such accessibility issues are part of a wider debate which we will not be pursued in this paper, except to note that, if a system is sufficiently well-designed, it should in itself help with motivating the learners.