Leeds is a digital powerhouse. It has a thriving digital, tech and creative sector employing tens of thousands of people and it’s great to see that being celebrated this week through the Leeds Digital Festival.

As an institution – and part of the city’s Anchor Network – Leeds Trinity is working to engage its students with all the city has to offer and, working with the significant employer network that supports its placement provision, the University has a framework to listen and respond to employers.

Over the last few years, Leeds Trinity has implemented a number of projects in direct response to the needs of the local labour market, including:

• A symposium on the challenges of recruiting to digital roles, resulting in a Computer Science degree designed in partnership with industry to address business needs. That programme is now in its fourth year and continues to work with business to ensure students understand the context their skills will be utilised in and have the chance to apply those skills to real-world projects.
• Running short courses to address digital skills gaps through [re]boot, a project led by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and funded by European Social Fund (ESF). The project provided skills for those looking to upskill and/or change career and successfully engaged over 150 participants from the region.
• Growing our apprenticeship portfolio through labour market intelligence; this has recently expanded to include the launch of a Digital Marketing apprenticeship and Project Manager and Systems Thinking Practitioner apprenticeships will follow, building on existing expertise in policing, leadership, supply chain and business-to-business sales.
• Running a pilot project to test embedding digital inputs across a range of undergraduate programmes and develop our understanding of how students respond to these.

This is a journey we are still on as we continue to reflect on how we best engage our diverse student body in the changing nature and digital transformation of the labour market. Our new Strategic Plan is the foundation for this journey as it positions us as a career-led University connecting with the Leeds City Region agenda, which is committed to placing digital at the heart of what we do. So, what does this mean for our practice and our learners?

It means that we are committed to supporting the journey of our students into graduate employment from the first day they join us – through embedded personal and professional development content and supported by our new Career Passport project which will allow every single student to track and evidence their progress, providing them with a rich body of material to draw on when they are applying for graduate jobs or further study.

It means that we are reviewing how we can embed rich employer-led content and real-world assessment across our programmes and build in the integrated use of digital tools and technology, so students understand their power in creating, connecting and collaborating. To realise this ambition, we are launching a staged scheme for staff to help them develop and be recognised for their own digital expertise.

Finally, we are in the process of implementing a major change project linked to our embedded placements. From September 2023, all our students will undertake a final year work-based learning project which gives them the opportunity to bring together their knowledge and utilise this through negotiating project outcomes with employers.

Achieving all of this is not a one-step approach. It is long term, based on understanding the needs of our students and our work will evolve as the labour market and broader world changes. But it is built on a vision of transformative education which is strongly connected to the local region, engaged with global issues and delivered through co-creative partnership with our students and with employers and other organisations.

Professor Catherine O’Connor is the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Experience at Leeds Trinity University.