Student Employability

Student Employability

About the customer
Maastricht University (UM) is an international university in the Netherlands with approximately 18,000 students and 4,400 employees. It provides its students an innovative and multi/interdisciplinary education model.

Business need
Maastricht University wanted to provide its students the necessary tools to help provide insights about/ -and help them become more aware of their employability. They want to prepare their students for the world of work with the knowledge, skills and qualities that employers are looking for.

Solution
Universiteit maastricht contacted Bizzomate to see if they could help in creating a team that:

1. a) could build a portal thats provides all the employability information in a few different ways to its students
2. b) in addition, the team must deliver a course repository in which the non-curricular components are stored

Bizzomate delivered a new employability portal, which assists students in a smooth transition from their studies to work. It encourages them to develop skills that are essential for the labour market in the 21st century. The employability portal is approached through the student portal. In the employability portal students find activities to improve their employability. Students apply several selections to find their most relevant information.

The UM API is used to automatically pick up the students’ study/studies when logging in on the employability portal. Using this solution the portal offers users the most relevant and important information.

The My Employability Scan is a self assessment app with which students measure their own personal employability competencies. Based on his or her score the student receives feedback and suggestions for improvement.

In the course repository non-regular activities can be stored and enriched. Such as (online) events and workshops. All events and workshops can be archived and coach view workshops can be shown. Coachview is one of the source systems for the course repository. It provides the repository with all workshops from the UM career centre and the UM psychologists.

The low-code platform of Mendix was the most logical choice considering the wishes and requirements of the project, of which the need for a replacement of the outdated MS Access application is one. UM already had positive experiences with Mendix.

After a market consultation forces were joined with Bizzomate. The positive experiences during the implementation of the project ITEM played a role in this decision.

The solutions are both mobile/multi-channel. The Mendix feature ‘Integration Activities’ was key for building the solutions. Without the option to import and export calls, the course repository and employability portal applications would be empty and useless.

Results
Maastricht University went live with a Course Repository application whose purpose is to collect all non-curricular education data, and a Student employability portal. The student can now use the portal using their SSO credentials and execute an Employability Self-test. Also, can they see which the most recommended courses/workshops/events are based on the student’s study information. They can directly via the portal register for these different courses and see how these improve their employability. In just over a month we had 850 completed questionnaires. Students. The students were very positive and rated the app with four out of five.