UQ academics Dr Eve Klein and Dr James Lewandowski-Cox have co-published a research article in the International Journal for Music Education. Their research maps particular skillsets taught in the Australian undergraduate music technology curriculum and how music technology courses instil professionally transferable skills.
Their research mapped 63 undergraduate courses with their learning outcomes and how they aligned against two benchmarks. The first benchmark was the Ten Skills for the Future Workforce model that 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 revealed that Australian music technology courses teach a wide range of universal skills including novel and adaptive thinking, computational thinking, new media literacy, and design mindsets universally. However, this curriculum mapping also revealed a deficit in employability skills related to cross-cultural competency, transdisciplinarity, virtual collaboration, and collaboration more generally.
Dr Klein and Dr Lewandowski-Cox believe the research implies that Australian music technology educators prioritise specific technical and creative skillsets over higher-order applications of skills and knowledge that are contextualised in their broader social and cultural contexts. The article also demonstrated how curriculum mapping can be implemented to embed employability skills progressively across a program sequence using a case study from The University of Queensland's School of Music.
