Swinburne Uni gives students new online tool to job hunt

Swinburne University will give its students a new online tool to help them get jobs when they graduate.

Swinburne University is giving students a new online tool to help them find a job.

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: Swinburne’s innovation, education on disability

New job tool for students

Swinburne University will give its students a new online tool to help them get jobs when they graduate. It has partnered with US social networking platform Portfolium, which lets students and graduates display their academic work and their experience in an e-portfolio which demonstrates their skills and capabilities to potential employers.

The pilot program offering Portfolium to students and recent graduates starts this year. Duncan Bentley, the university’s deputy vice-chancellor academic, said it was essential for graduates to be able to use such a tool to showcase themselves as a supplement to traditional resumes.

Universities in the US which already offer Portfolium to students include Yale, Cal State, Purdue and Virginia Tech.

Curtin’s new MOOC

Curtin University has launched a new massive open online course called Disability and Digital Media which explores how social media is changing perceptions of disability.

Course co-ordinator Katie Ellis, from the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social

Inquiry, said the MOOC was an opportunity for people to learn about the relationship between digital technologies and disability.

“As an increasingly prevalent and pervasive part of our daily lives, the internet is a reflection of who we are and the society we live in,” Associate Professor Ellis said.

The MOOC will cover a range of topics including how memes and viral content are being

used by disability activists. It will run on the edX MOOC platform and starts on February 4.