ELTA-ELSE: A new skills building programme through the AHEAD project
View(s):The university system of Sri Lanka has begun implementing Enriching Teaching, Learning, and Assessment and English Language Skills Enhancement (ELTA-ELSE) Development Projects (DPs) under the Accelerating Higher Education Expansion and Development (AHEAD) programme.
Under this programme, 36 faculties and 44 departments are currently employing the skill-building programme that was introduced under results area 2 of the project.
According to an AHEAD team member, the aim of the ELTA-ELSE DP was to promote academic excellence, socio-emotional skills, and English language skills proficiency among students to improve the quality of higher education with the ultimate objective of enhancing the job prospects and employment performance of graduates. The faculties and departments that qualified for these competitive grants were at various stages of implementing innovative and wide-ranging initiatives to achieve this objective.
Given ELTA-ELSE’s emphasis on supporting the employment prospects of the undergraduates, the University of Jaffna’s Faculty of Applied Science at the Vavuniya campus had undertaken a series of interconnected activities that aim at enabling their students to obtain secure jobs in reputed private and public sector establishments.
One of the key activities centres around internships. Since there were few opportunities to obtain internships in Vavuniya and it was difficult to convince resource people from the cities to travel there, the Faculty had used AHEAD funds to establish a Career Guidance Focal Point in Colombo.
A resource person had been attached to this focal point as a Career Guidance Facilitator (CGF). He serves the faculty by bridging the gap between the undergraduates from Vavuniya and the world of work. He had established links with high-end firms such as WSO2, KPMG, Virtusa, IFS, Codegen and Altria for students enrolled in degrees in Computing, IT & ICT as well as the Social and Environmental Sustainability divisions of MAS Holdings, Bogawantalawa Plantations PLC, and Heritance in Kandalama.
The CGF had also arranged workshops on socio-emotional skills development and CV writing and applying for jobs. In addition, he had conducted an internship preference survey designed to obtain students’ opinions on job placement and learn about their awareness and expectations of internships and career guidance programs.
He had also arranged several field visits to industries. Through these means, the CGF had managed to obtain internships for students in highly reputed firms such as Virtusa, KPMG Sri Lanka, and Multibility (Pvt) Ltd. The ELTA-ELSE team at the Faculty of Applied Science at the Vavuniya Campus was confident that these opportunities would result in better employment prospects for their undergraduates as well as enhance the reputation of their faculty in the long term.
- Tharushi Weerasinghe