School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of ScienceFACULTY OF ARTS
EMBEDDING EMPLOYABILITY AND ACADEMIC SKILLS IN THE
CURRICULUM
Mel Prideaux
Context
• School decision to offer timetabled (but not programmed) opportunities for employability and academic skills development
• BUT, subject specific issues as well:• ‘Preach it or teach it…’ but now ‘religion experts’ are in demand
• So articulating ‘programme level learning’ is more important
• Compulsory Final Year Project
• A contested subject area
THEO2300 Studying Religion in Context
All level 2 studying PER or TRS as single or joint honours student at the University of Leeds
• Compulsory, 20 credit, ‘pass to progress’
• Students actively engaged in planning, developing and reviewing the module
Key objective: Increase the coherence of, and performance in TRS BA programmes through provision of a skills orientated curriculum content which includes:
• Developing graduate employability through reflecting on key subject –specific and general skills
Four components to assessment:
• 2000 word report on Method and Theory in the Study of Religions (30%)
• Weekly reflective log (30%)
• Skills audit (10%)
• Annotated Bibliography (30%)
Taught Content
Semester one:
Three mini lecture series, plus one module orientation and one module review
Eleven seminars:
Traditional discussion to accompany mini lecture series
Thematic ‘cross-programme’ discussions
Semester two:
Mix of either weekly lecture or seminar covering skills (including literature search and review and employability) and content (discussion of issues in method and theory).
Introducing a Level 2 Skills Audit
• Key objectives:• increase confidence in programme level skills and knowledge
• raise awareness of transferable skills in module content
• Format in first year:• A skills audit tool to identify strengths and weaknesses:
• Academic skills
• Employability skills
• Introduced and first completed in seminar in semester one
• Discussed, completed and signed off by personal tutor in semester 2
• Submitted for assessment end of semester 2
The ‘Marmite Effect’
The module in general and the skills audit particularly:
The ‘Interactive Bit’
Discuss the example page from the original skills audit
• Why might some students have disliked it?
• Why might some students have liked it?
The ‘Silent Killers’
• Module, and ‘knowledge’, focus of students entering level two
• Personal tutors don’t always (often?) have experience outside University
• Change is scary
• Compulsion is scary
• There’s a capricious God of assessment
New Improved Marmite?
• Removed personal tutors as a compulsory part of the audit process
• Integrated academic and employability skills and therefore reduced length
• Streamlined other features of the module to reduce assessment burden BUT this has meant losing some pedagogically valuable elements…
The questions still to be answered…
• How do we know if our interventions have been successful?
• How can we make the subject-specific skills audit work effectively alongside LfL?
• How can we ensure JH curriculum coherence?
Key Learns…
1. Acknowledge the ‘silent killers’
2. Student and colleague ‘buy in’
3. The students and colleagues who inform development have often already ‘bought in’ – how to engage those who are reluctant?
4. A coherent programme does not have to rely on an established corpus of knowledge
5. Articulating skills can be as challenging as articulating knowledge, concepts or theories
Further information
• Search for ‘Studying in Context’ on Casebook, includes module and teaching handbooks
• Materials available on the Careers website are useful for thinking about transferable skills: http://careerweb.leeds.ac.uk/info/4/make_yourself_employable/200/skills_in_context
• ‘Pedagogy for Employability’, an HEA working group report, is available through the library catalogue and raises some useful and interesting questions
• The Leeds Employability Strategy is an important background document: http://www.lts.leeds.ac.uk/Employability/EmployabilityStrategy.php?PAGE=136
• Also, Student Education fellowship Reports, particularly Hallett: http://www.sddu.leeds.ac.uk/sddu-200910rhallet.html
• Treherne and Rowson’s report on Student Research and Employability in the Arts is also a useful read: www.sddu.leeds.ac.uk/uploaded/StudentsResearchAndEmployabilityInArts.docx - 106k - 2012-10-15
