In our first blog post in this Employability in the Curriculum series., we introduced you to the concept of employability in the curriculum and why it especially matters now. If you missed it, take a minute to read here.
Without any further ado, the rest of the blog posts in this series are designed to help you get stuck into the matter at hand – i.e. practical tips on how to maximise the potential of your unit or programme to help students in their future success.
Today’s blog is all about recognising how you are already developing employability, and encouraging you to think about ways this could be enhanced.
1. Recognising where you are already developing employability
Enhancing employability is often about surfacing what’s already there. Once you’re clear on how your course content and methods help to prepare students for their future lives after university, you can help to make this value explicit for them.
A good starting point is thinking about where you want students to be at the end of your unit or programme. What types of learners and future graduates are you encouraging? This can be helpful in identifying the skills, knowledge and attributes your curriculum is developing.
You can also break this down to think specifically about your:
- Content: Where do the topics covered connect to the real world? What elements of the knowledge gained could students apply beyond their academic studies?
- Tasks and assessment: What skills and attributes do your activities and assessments develop? How will these equip students for life and work after university?
Identifying the knowledge that you are imparting may be straightforward; picking out skills and attributes can feel a little trickier. However, the following can help:
- QAA Subject Benchmark Statements – outline the skills, knowledge and attributes reasonably expected of graduates in a subject – i.e. what employers are looking for.
- The Bristol Skills Framework – outlines the key skills and attributes students should be developing at Bristol.
- Your unit or programme ILOs – these may not explicitly mention skills, but can be a helpful reminder of the skills and attributes you set out to develop. E.g. from the learning outcome ‘Construct a reasoned argument about a poet(s) or poem(s) supported by appropriate use of evidence and analysis, and close attention to form and technique’, you could pick out the following skills: written communication for different audiences, analytical skills, and attention to detail.
2. Enhancing employability in your unit or programme
Having reflected on where and how your curriculum already helps students to develop skills, knowledge, and attributes, how can you enhance what you’re already doing? Here are some suggestions:
Use a range of teaching and assessment methods
The teaching and assessment methods you choose will impact the skills and attributes your students develop. For example, providing opportunities for students to work together, problem solve and actively engage with their learning are all approaches that enhance employability skills. Using a range of different methods is also important, to ensure that a variety of student learners are catered for. Of course it’s not possible, nor desirable, for an individual unit to meaningfully cover all skills – but we can reasonably expect students to have the opportunity to develop a rounded skill set across their entire programme.
As you’d expect, our friends in BILT have a lot of resources to help you with teaching and assessment methods to enhance students’ skills:
- Active Learning Cookbook – tips on integrating more active and collaborative learning into teaching, which allows students to engage employability skills such as problem solving, analysis, synthesis, communication and interpersonal.
- Embedding Innovation and Enterprise – key points on integrating a variety of skills associated with innovation and enterprise into your teaching.
- Problem Based Learning – a student-centred approach to learning that supports the development of creativity and complex problem-solving.
- Group Work – advice for integrating or enhancing group work within your curriculum.
- Dissertation Alternatives – these can offer opportunities for employability skills development.
- Blended learning case studies – examples of how different schools are delivering engaging blended teaching and assessment.
For ideas on innovation around assessment methods, you may find Advance HE’s Assessment Game useful.
The good news is that it’s likely you will already be thinking about some of these in other contexts, which brings us nicely to our core message – that employability can be seen as an added benefit to work you’re already doing to develop an engaging and challenging learning experience.
Support students to recognise their skills
It’s one thing for you to recognise how your unit or programme develops your students – it’s another to give your students the language to articulate it. To ensure that students recognise how their studies are helping to prepare them for their future success, we need to help them to make this link. Our upcoming blog post on helping students to recognise and articulate their value will give advice on this.
Provide opportunities for real-world learning
Real-world learning methods are another fantastic way to integrate skills development in the curriculum. Watch out for our upcoming blog posts on real-world learning and Engaged learning for ideas and advice on this, as well as some examples of good practice already taking place at Bristol.
Help students make the link with their future
To encourage students to make the most of opportunities to explore and develop during their time at university, we need to support them to make connections between what they are learning and experiencing now, and where they want to be in the future. We’ll be saying more on this later in the series!
We would love to hear from you. How are you enhancing employability through your units or programmes? What else do you need advice or inspiration on in order to do this?
Share your feedback to help us develop our advice and guidance in the coming months. Get in touch with Ellen (Faculty Employability Manager) at ellen.grace@bristol.ac.uk.