On Monday 31 October 2022, University of Pretoria held a hybrid seminar called SUCSESS”@UP: integrating industry, ingenuity and initiative!
The seminar explored the current youth employability climate in South Africa. Industry, government and academic leaders presented different perspectives that ranged from the macro-economic impacts to the individual’s experience. The main focus of the seminar was how industry/university collaboration can improve the employability of graduates, which is also the main goal of the entire SUCSESS project.
During the seminar, the speakers talked about the employability of the youth from many viewpoints, e.g. how automation and AI will influence employability.
The SUCSESS Project Manager Eva Holmberg introduced the SUCSESS project and UP lecturer Hannes Engelbrecht talked about what has already been accomplished with the project so far regarding increasing the employability of the graduates.
Hannes talked about the skills that have already been implemented in the projects such as the UP campus tours. Now even more teaching tools and methods, such as design sprints and hackathons, as well as inquiry learning and flipped learning have been integrated along with technology in teaching. The Employability Lab also increases collaboration with the industry.
The students also told their story about employability and how their studies have been influenced by the new tools and methods and ways of learning.
It was interesting to hear for example about implementing the Design Sprint. The inspiring stories by the students were the highlight of the afternoon.
You can view the seminar under this link in YouTube.
