Collaborative strategies for designing employability curriculum in a liberal arts context

In Australian higher education, the push for curriculum innovation to enhance graduate employability is crucial but faces contention and debate. While the importance of integrating employability skills is widely recognised, perspectives on how and whether to incorporate these as curricular objectives vary, especially in liberal arts programs. This paper explores a multidisciplinary academic team’s experiences of embedding employability units into the Bachelor of Arts and undergraduate Communication and Creative Arts degrees at one Australian university. It addresses the challenges of diverse disciplinary perspectives on employability, career education, and work-integrated learning (WIL), and the design for a diverse student cohort, including career starters, career advancers, and career changers from multiple disciplinary contexts. Utilising Tuckman’s ‘forming, storming, norming, and performing’ model, the paper evaluates the team’s dynamics, offering insights and guidance for academics and institutions undertaking similar curriculum innovation projects to enhance graduate employability. This case study highlights the institutional support necessary for fostering sustainable curriculum reforms and the positive effects of collaborative curriculum design on the professional development and teaching capabilities of the educators involved.