Reimagining Higher Education: How Dublin City University is Evidencing Transversal Skills at Scale

Despite leading Ireland in graduate employment rates and median earnings, Dublin City University (DCU) recognised a fundamental challenge facing higher education: in an age where knowledge is freely available and AI reshapes the workplace, how do universities demonstrate their unique value?

The answer lies in DCU Futures, a "radical reimagination of the curriculum" funded by nearly €20 million from the Irish Government's Human Capital Initiative. At its heart is a comprehensive approach to developing and evidencing transversal skills, powered by Symplicity's UniHub platform.

The Challenge

"We are in a time of huge disruption in higher education at the moment. Things have never been more uncertain," explains Susan Hegarty, Institutional Lead for DCU Futures. "You can go onto LinkedIn Learning, you can do MOOCs, you can do Micro-credentials—so what's the value of in-person learning?"

With 80% of DCU's 20,000 students undertaking work placements, the university needed to capture and validate skills development at scale. The challenge was creating a system that evidenced capabilities across five key pillars—Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Citizenship—without creating additional administrative burden.

The Solution: Seamless Integration

DCU partnered with Symplicity to integrate their Moodle learning management system with UniHub, creating an automated workflow that captures validated skills evidence as academics grade modules.

"For us, this has made it so much easier for our academics. They're used to going into Moodle, adding their ratings and grading. This has not introduced any change for that," Teresa O’Connor, Senior Business Analyst at DCU, notes. "It means fewer queries from students, so it doesn't increase any workload."

The integration runs hourly, automatically flowing skills ratings into UniHub where students can view their development across all five competency pillars. Crucially, the platform distinguishes between university-validated evidence from modules and work placements, and student self-reported experiences.

Proven Impact

With over 2,000 students now on the platform, the results are compelling. Student feedback shows 68% believe prospective employers will find their skills reports valuable, whilst 10% have already generated reports for job applications.

More significantly, independent evaluation demonstrates DCU Futures students are outperforming peers on Ireland's national student survey. Collaborative learning scores reached 41.7 compared to 29.9 nationally, whilst creative and social skills measured 38.2 against 31.9 nationally.

"We can see that it is working, and the students are gaining those skills," confirms Susan.

Scaling Success

DCU's approach has earned recognition through the President's Team Award for Teaching and Learning. The university has now committed to the Higher Education Authority to roll out transversal skills evidencing across most undergraduate programmes over the next five years.

"The evidencing on the platform is actually written into our performance agreement with the Higher Education Authority," notes Susan. "From the outset, the university saw this not as a project, but actually as a philosophy."

As universities worldwide grapple with demonstrating their value in an uncertain future, DCU's partnership with Symplicity offers a scalable model for helping students develop, evidence, and articulate the uniquely human skills that will enable them to thrive.

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