Degree accreditation standard

In the UK, the Institute of Coding was a collaboration between 33 Universities in England and over 100 employers, receiving £20M of matched funding from the UK government.  Its aim was to increase the level of digital skills generally, and to address the “skills gap” in particular.  A major workstream within the Institute of Coding was to develop a new degree accreditation standard specifically designed to address the skills gap.
Computing degrees typically focus on knowledge and understanding, with practical activities executed within a “safe” teaching environment.  Employers, however, want graduates with real-world experience who are “work-ready”.  This is the essence of the “skills gap”, observed in many countries worldwide. 

This webinar will describe the resulting accreditation standard, which is based on the SFIA framework rather than on academic bodies of knowledge.  It will show how SFIA can be used to design a curriculum which satisfies the relevant statutory (academic) frameworks, but focusses on the development of real-world competence rather than on academic knowledge alone.  A criterion-based, scalable, approach to assessing evidence of competence will also be described. 

The webinar is presented by David Bowers, an academic at the Open University, UK, who led the accreditation workstream for the Institute of Coding.  David is also a SFIA consultant and a member of the SFIA Council, with many years’ experience using SFIA to support students on placements to build validated portfolios of their achievements in the workplace.

Link to Youtube webinar recording here

Link to Q&A during the webinar here