Helping Students Connect Your Class to Their Future Career

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development

Your students may not realize it, but in your classes, they are developing the skills that their future employers are seeking.  To help your students understand this connection between classroom and career, Valpo is piloting the RATE tool. In this article, Dean Bagel Johnson explains why he thinks RATE will help promote the humanities and Betsy Burow-Flak describes how she uses RATE in her classroom.

What is RATE?

RATE provides your students with a way to reflect at just the right moment on the skills that they are building. The tool prompts students to:

• R – Reflect on their experiences inside and outside the classroom
• A – Articulate how those experiences helped them develop competencies
• T – Translate how these competencies are of value in professional contexts
• E – Evaluate their level of readiness in these competencies

Bagel first learned about RATE from a conference presentation by faculty from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota.  He immediately saw it as an excellent way to help students link job skills to their liberal arts classes. 

At the U of M, they identified ten Core Competencies that demonstrate the skills needed for students to adapt and advance professionally. These competencies, identified through discussions with employers, alumni, and national career development organizations, are:

• Analytical & Critical Thinking
• Applied Problem Solving
• Ethical Reasoning & Decision Making
• Innovation & Creativity
• Digital Literacy
• Engaging Diversity
• Active Citizenship & Community Engagement
• Teamwork & Leadership
• Oral & Written Communication
• Career Management

How could RATE Help Valpo?

Bagel views these competencies as a great way to make students aware of how their classes and extracurriculars cultivate the soft skills that employers value.  For example, a student involved in a theatre production at Valpo can reflect on and demonstrate skill development in teamwork & leadership, oral & written communication, and applied problem solving. Bagel also noted that RATE’s ten Core Competencies also map well onto the eight Career Readiness Competencies identified by NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, in their annual report.

Bagel sees three great advantages of the RATE tool for Valparaiso:

1. Students can use it when they are getting ready for a job interview or graduate school application.  They can review their RATE portfolio to provide evidence of how they have grown in these core skills during their time here. 
2. RATE allows individual faculty as well as departments to track how well their students are doing in these core competencies.  This data can be used to assess the effectiveness of a course or a program. 
3. The RATE tool is both inexpensive and easily integrated into Canvas, so it can be turned on with the click of a button. Therefore, both faculty and students will find the tool easy to work with.

Valpo’s English Department Pilots RATE

In the fall of 2025, the entire English department began to use RATE in their classes. They hope that it can become part of their annual department assessment process. Betsy Burow-Flak debuted it in her fall Writing for the Health Sciences course.  She had her students use RATE to reinforce course learning objectives on how developing their skills in critical thinking and oral communication could improve patient care.  

Because the RATE tool was developed by educators, Betsy sees that her students are learning as they respond to the questions in the tool. RATE provides students with the vocabulary they need for thinking about skill development as well as strategies for developing those skills further. For example, in the Oral and Written Communication section, students are asked to consider what steps they might take to prepare to speak in public. Having those steps written down will help them the next time they need to do a presentation.

Betsy also appreciates how the RATE tool asks students multiple questions about each skill they assess and does not accept short answers. She believes students are less likely to use AI for their responses, since they can see how this tool, if used honestly, will benefit them in their future work. 

Finally, Betsy mentioned two things faculty need to know as they begin to use RATE:

1. You cannot alter the wording of prompts in the tool.  Since RATE wants students to look at the same skills in many classes over several years, the questions need to stay consistent. 
2. Betsy suggests that you try the tool yourself before assigning it to students. This will give you a sense of how it operates and also some perspective on how long your assignment might take.

Valparaiso is piloting RATE this year.  If the pilot goes well, we may also explore providing digital badges for students who achieve benchmarks in the ten core competencies under the new Valpo Virtual  program.  If you would like to learn more about the RATE tool pilot, you can contact Bonnie.DahlkeGoebbert@valpo.edu.