Employability is at the core of this module helping to equip students with the skills recognised as essential by graduate employers. It aims to refine scholarly and professional skills introduced in Year 1, with students actively encouraged to record their own progress through their Mahara portfolio or its equivalent in the context of their own career aspirations and long-term goals. This module is designed to develop the knowledge, understanding, skills and thought processes necessary for effective, original academic and/or work-focused research. A recognised prerequisite for graduate employment is data handling/research skills and the techniques and approaches used here will reflect the student's academic discipline providing a basis for progression to the Level 6 Dissertation module or equivalent. Critical thinking, autonomy, independent learning and subject specific competencies will be promoted through its delivery. The module gives students the opportunity to identify realistic and satisfactory short- and long-term career goals helping students to acquire graduate skills, attributes and attitudes that will be necessary to achieve this. Students will have opportunities to develop their understanding of personal development planning leading to the identification of realistic and satisfactory career goals and the skills development and knowledge acquisition that will be necessary to achieve these. It seeks to give students an understanding of the skills needed in their eventual roles dealing with complex situations as professional practitioners holding supervisory and managerial responsibilities.