Understanding how international experiences engage employability

Graduate employability is a key issue for higher education institutions. Industry recruiting strategies have evolved in recent years and the focus has shifted from graduates who have sound academic knowledge to graduates who can also demonstrate how they apply knowledge and other transferable skills in the workplace. International experiences matter for employers but only if graduates can transform skills acquired into behaviours that are observable and translatable into value-adding workplace performance. We used game-based analytics to gain insight into hidden behaviours associated with skills that are valued most by employers. In doing so, this gave us an opportunity to think more creatively about employability development through international experiences. In order to understand whether international experiences enhance graduate employability, it is necessary to reduce conceptual ambiguity and define employability. In fact, the operationalisation of employability from a theoretical concept to a measurable index is not a small undertaking. This chapter represents a tentative answer: game-based analytics. Most literature concentrates on the perception of different stakeholders on the development of employability skills, and our study tries to capture how well students can transform these skills into behaviours. We adopt a theoretical concept of employability under the processual perspective of ability to apply knowledge and skill, and we measured it by analysing behaviours with game-based analytics.