Prepare Now For The Future

Your course of study is designed to nudge you towards developing a diverse, well-rounded set of skills and knowledge.  However, there is only so much you can cover in a limited number of hours devoted to a course of study. This means that in order to refine the transferable skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century, you may sometimes need to look outside of your curriculum.

For this reason, it is essential that you create a semester skill development plan in order to steadily acquire all the necessary skills before graduation. This topic will outline the Top Ten 21^st Century Skills identified by the World Economic Forum, which should be at the forefront of your skill development plan:

Analytical thinking and innovation

Analytical thinking is necessary to exercise judgment: assess a situation from a variety of points of view, consider possible outcomes depending on various courses of action and reaching the most optimal decision given the circumstances, as well as settling on the course of action most likely to secure the desired outcomes.  It often involves negotiating and innovation with the stakeholders (other people having stake or interest in the outcome) and ensuring their buy in.

Plan: To develop these skills, engage in workplace experience or volunteer through extracurricular activities.  Some volunteer positions are a great way to apply your course knowledge, exercise professional judgment, and learn how to make decisions in collaboration with others.  Through the act of volunteering, you can also demonstrate your commitment to specific causes and values.

Active learning and learning strategies

Active learning provides a deeper and more interesting learning experience  by gaining the involvement of the student directly in the learning process. As an adult student, more responsibility falls on you to get involved using collaboration with the teacher and classmates.

The WEF describes "Learning strategies" as "Capacities for teaching others how to do something, including selecting and using training/instructional methods and procedures appropriate for the situation when learning or teaching new things."

Plan: Consider becoming a Student mentor

All mentors are successful undergraduate students, who remember what it's like to be a new student. They're trained and supported to share their knowledge and experience with new students and help them progress through their first study period at JCU.

Consider becoming a student mentor

Complex problem solving

The World Economic Forum have identified 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – part of a wider 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – to eradicate poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease, expire at the end of this year. 193 countries had agreed to a set of development goals which will require complex problem solving.

Complex Problem Solving describes the successful interaction with complex systems targeted at reaching a desired goal state or a problem solution.

Plan: Course group work, student clubs and activities, part time work or mooting competitions are all abound with opportunities to develop problem solving skills in practice.

Apart from your involvement in a Student Club, try to compete in a student competition or challenge.  Recruit a small, interdisciplinary team and help deliver a solution to a real life problem.  Employers look for creative risk takers and innovators and will be impressed to hear about your project management and teamwork experience.  Most of these competitions are scheduled once a year, so the sooner you pencil them in your calendar and start recruiting your teammates, the better.

Critical thinking and analysis

Critical thinking boils down to your attitude to assess information on its merits, such as understanding varying points of view.  It employs analytical skills and is an essential ingredient of any effective negotiation – a conversation aimed at finding a compromise between disagreeing parties.  Critical thinking is also necessary to solve complex problems.  A complex problem, as opposed to a complicated or difficult problem, requires novel solutions because some problems cannot be solved by following pre-determined steps and can have a variety of outcomes.

Plan: Volunteering, workplace experiences, placements, capstone projects, fieldwork, internships, and vacation programs often provide opportunities to tackle complex problems.  Course-relevant experience also enables you to clarify and refine your professional interests, and test your knowledge and ability to apply it in real-life professional situations – see Maximise Course-Relevant Experience module in the JCU Employability Edge program.

Leadership and social influence

Based on your Leadership skills and using emotional intelligence, you can identify people’s strengths and interests and effectively allocate tasks, persuade them to contribute, and see where your own contributions fit in.

Good leadership involves the very human ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in order to bring out the best in people. You want to create an environment where your collaborators feel valued, supported and self-motivated. .  It is important to be aware of your own natural management style and recognise your collaborator’s work style, and develop your ability to manage a work style that is not naturally matched with your management style in order to make the collaboration effective, satisfying and smooth.

Leadership skills build on many of the other skillsets – problem-solving, emotional intelligence, creativity – to guide others along the path towards a common goal of business success. Importantly, it means that as well as achieving success, it’s done in a way that enables everyone on the job to grow, develop and thrive. Individuals that are able to demonstrate these leadership qualities will find themselves immensely valuable and always appreciated.

Plan:  Join or start a Student Club, interact with fellow members, and consider taking on a leadership role to practice emotional intelligence.  To further develop these skills, become a JCU Student Mentor or JCU Student Ambassador.  Involvement helps to practice building rapport, assessing developmental needs, providing tailored guidance – essential skills in serving professional clients and assuming leadership positions within organisations.

Technology use, monitoring and control

Without doubt, the worker of the future will need to be technologically savvy to evolve in any dynamic industry. As intelligent technologies progress and more companies move their information to cloud-based systems, workers need to become skilled in capitalising on staying up to date with new technology and to stay competitive.

Workers will need to effectively use digital tools and platforms to solve problems and create value and those skills will be increasingly in demand. As well as where to find the data information we need and what tools we can use to analyze it, we will be expected to understand the rules and regulations that need to be followed to work with data fairly and ethically.

Plan : JCU provide an extensive support  IT Services | Technology Solutions Directorate - JCU Australia

Consider accessing new programs and becoming proficient is new technology, and accessing LinkedIn Learning

Technology design and programming

Computer programming is the process of writing instructions for a computer, application, or software. Programming skills, also known as coding skills, are what you use to write those instructions. Often, you’ll need employability skills to work effectively with team members and explain your work to people outside of your team.  Those skills include Problem-solving; Attention to detail; Collaboration; Analytical skills.

When it comes to design, we need to establish a culture of experimentation and creativity.

Plan: To practice this skill, participate in the JCU IT Design Sprint (for IT, Engineering and Science students), partake in student competitions and challenges, keep an eye on the events and programs offered by Research and Innovation Services, or complete an online module on enterprise/creative thinking.

Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to switch between different modes of thinking at will, and shift attention from one activity to the other (between mental tasks, languages, cultural patterns, beliefs) in order to effectively adapt your thinking from habitual to new situations.

Plan: Consider a short or a semester-long stay overseas as part of your degree.  This will help build your global acumen, cross-cultural communication skills and cultural sensitivity; show adaptability and resilience; and develop your ability to think on your feet while dealing with unfamiliar situations and environments.  Cognitive flexibility can also be developed through entrepreneurial pursuits, such as student competitions and challenges, seeking new experiences outside of our comfort zone, meeting people from outside of our familiar circle through volunteering, or changing our daily routines – the way we commute or using the non-dominant hand to operate the computer mouse.

As we manage multiple priorities of daily life, there maybe times as a student you need to draw on additional Support resources. Some of those to support you are listed here Support - JCU Australia.

These include Student success officers who are responsible for providing personalised support across the student lifecycle to internal and external students. Student Success Officers - JCU Australia

Wellbeing resources can be found here Student Equity and Wellbeing - Resources - JCU Australia

Consider a short or a semester-long stay overseas as part of your degree.  This will help build your, global acumen, cross-cultural communication skills and cultural sensitivity; show adaptability and resilience; and develop your ability to think on your feet while dealing with unfamiliar situations and environments.

Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation

Ideation boils down to generating new ideas.  Many people tend to associate ideation and problem-solving with entrepreneurship.   Most ideation is a condition of novel thinking in complex problem solving, scientific discovery, engineering, product or service development, politics and policy.  Reasoning, problem-solving and ideation starts with the attitude of seeing problems as intellectual challenges to find solutions, rather than something to avoid or complain about.

Plan: To practice this skill, participate in the JCU IT Design Sprint (for IT, Engineering and Science students), partake in student competitions and challenges, keep an eye on the events and programs offered by Research and Innovation Services, or complete an online module on enterprise/creative thinking – see Boost Your Skills module in the JCU Employability Edge program.

Other skills to consider

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability and willingness to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand their position, even if you do not agree with them or do not share their values.  It is the foundation for respect, effective communication, collaboration, and service.

Plan: Join or start a Student Club, interact with fellow members, and consider taking on a leadership role to practice emotional intelligence.  To further develop these skills, become a JCU Student Mentor or JCU Student Ambassador.  Involvement helps to practice building rapport, assessing developmental needs, providing tailored guidance – essential skills in serving professional clients and assuming leadership positions within organisations.

People management and collaboration

Based on your emotional intelligence, you can identify people’s strengths and interests and effectively allocate tasks, persuade them to contribute, and see where your own contributions fit in.  You want to create an environment where your collaborators feel valued, supported and self-motivated.  It is important to be aware of your own natural management style and recognise your collaborator’s work style, and develop your ability to manage a work style that is not naturally matched with your management style in order to make the collaboration effective, satisfying and smooth.

Plan: Apart from your involvement in a Student Club, try to compete in a student competition or challenge.  Recruit a small, interdisciplinary team and help deliver a solution to a real life problem.  Employers look for creative risk takers and innovators and will be impressed to hear about your project management and teamwork experience.  Most of these competitions are scheduled once a year, so the sooner you pencil them in your calendar and start recruiting your teammates, the better.

Service orientation

Service orientation refers to a ‘can do attitude’ and the willingness and ability to go that extra mile in understanding, anticipating, and willingly addressing others’ needs.  A service orientation is consistently listed by employers as one of the top five requirements for all jobs and is also a source of personal satisfaction for those who display it.

Plan: Consider a part time or casual job whilst you are studying – check JCU CareerHub for opportunities.  Employers highly value part time work as a proof of your ability to act in a professional manner, follow workplace policies (health and safety, non-discrimination/harassment), and display transferable skills, such as customer service, teamwork, analytical skills, reasoning and problem solving, and time management.

Negotiating

Negotiating is a dialogue between at least two people aimed at shifting disagreement into a mutually beneficial outcome, which usually involves compromise on both sides in order to agree on issues of mutual interest.  We negotiate in everyday situations, such as agreeing on the mutually satisfactory price of a purchase, household contributions in a relationship, or task allocation in a project.  Negotiation is a key task of a number of professions such as brokers, salespeople, diplomats, or lawyers.

Plan: Course group work, student clubs and activities, part time work or mooting competitions are all abound with opportunities to develop negotiating skills in practice.