Music technology and Future Work Skills 2020: An employability mapping of Australian undergraduate music technology curriculum

Abstract

This study explored how Australian music technology courses teach employability skills. A curriculum mapping of 63 undergraduate courses was conducted with course learning outcomes aligned against two benchmarks. The first benchmark was the Ten Skills for the Future Workforce which identifies key employability skills graduates will require in the coming decade. The second benchmark was the Australian Qualifications Framework Specification for the Bachelor Degree which defines the generic skills graduates must obtain through Australian Bachelor Degrees. This curriculum mapping reveals that Australian music technology courses teach Novel and Adaptive Thinking, Computational Thinking, New Media Literacy, and Design Mindsets universally. However, this curriculum mapping also reveals a deficit in employability skills related to Cross-Cultural Competency, Transdisciplinarity, Virtual Collaboration, and Collaboration more generally. The implications of this mapping is that Australian music technology educators seem to be prioritizing specific technical and creative skills over higher-order applications of skills and knowledge which are contextualized in their broader social and cultural contexts. Finally, this article shows how curriculum mapping can be implemented to embed employability skills progressively across a program sequence using a case study from the School of Music, University of Queensland.