is it time to embed careers teaching and support in the disciplines?

Is it Time to Embed Careers Teaching and Support in the

Disciplines?

Pauline Kneale

School of GeographyUniversity of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT

[email protected] of Applied Hydrology with Learning and Teaching in

GeographyNTF Director White Rose CETL Enterprise

What would a successful employability and careers

operation look like?

Is it Time to Embed Careers Teaching and Support in the Disciplines?

• Background• Why don’t students engage?• What does / doesn’t work? • What might academics do?• What might careers

colleagues do? • Thoughts

Background

• Employability is crucial for recruitment and retention

• The strategic role and position of Careers Services’ was identified as one of the four areas of ‘critical examination’ in the review carried out by Professor Sir Martin Harris, in June 2000

• 'Developing Modern Higher Education Careers Services', contains a section entitled 'A Coherent Service'. A modern service, which provides high quality provision to meet customers'

Drivers and Support• Careers Education Benchmark Statement

http://www.agcas.org.uk/quality/careers_education_bs.htm

• Student Employability Profiles http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/2174.htm

• Institutional Approaches http://www.agcas.org.uk/employability/strategic_approaches/index.htm#employability

• Maguire 2005 – Delivering Quality Quality assurance and delivery of careers education, information and guidance for learning and work within higher education. Department for Education and Skills

www.agcas.org.uk/quality/docs/delivering-quality-executive-summary.pdf

Selecting 4 Recommendations

• HE Careers Services should strive to engage the interest, commitment and involvement of senior management within the HEI.

• Careers Service staff should be engaged as consultants, catalysts, and, where appropriate, deliverers, in relation to employability issues.

• The Careers Service could effect a more prominent role within the HEI by being centrally involved in the delivery of career planning modules which are run by individual departments.

• HE Careers Services should seek to establish Service Level Agreements with academic departments, with a view to contributing to the development of the curriculum, including elements for enhancing student employability.

Teaching and Learning StrategiesThe ‘Reading graduate’

• Acquired the skills to manage effectively their career and gain appropriate employment

• vi) Continuing to enhance the employability of all our graduates and extend the range of University-wide skill development opportunities, through the development of an Employability Strategy and exploring the accreditation of non-academic activities outside of the curriculum.

Portsmouth University: • A key component of this theme will be to ensure that curricula

contain explicit opportunities for learners to develop skills and attributes to enhance their employability and develop themselves as lifelong learners.

• The particular emphasis of this strategy will be on the further development and integration of blended learning into the curriculum, enhanced student support and the further development of self reflection and employability skills, the further development of assessment and feedback and the further development and reward of staff.

Is there a management disjunction?

• Does the Dean know what is in these reports

• Does the Head of School?• Does the average lecturer?

• Who needs to know?• Who are the gate keepers / influencers

to work with? • What do these people need to know?• How do we keep busy people up to

speed?

Why don’t students engage

• It’s not cool• Graduation is too far away• 'I will worry about a job when I've got a 2.1' • Many competing demands - vacation and

term time work, social and sporting activity• ‘I have to have my job in term time to keep

the loans below £6000. There isn’t time’

Are academics significant barriers to student

engagement?• Yes they are generally no help at all... • ‘I didn’t use the Careers Centre to get

my job’• ‘It’s not my job to work on CVs with the

students’• ‘They came here for Chemistry / History

/ French, so that’s what I’m doing with them’

• We need a culture shift. Employability affects us all.

• One Off Events• The Start of Year Announcement• Can I have ten minutes at the start of a

lecture? • Anything where the student doesn’t

have to follow up with a piece of personal research. (Assessment is critical to successfully engaging a student)

Post It Moment 1What does / doesn’t work?

Any system where the student must be proactive to start the engagement

• Student booked meetings• One-to-one careers interviews• Benefits that are too far away

Location Location Location

• All in one place or distributed?

• Café culture

Put the resources where the student

has to be

Post It Moment 2What could be done to move employability

and careers up the agenda?

What would a really adventurous, switched on VC do?

What would a really far sighted Head of School do?

What would a really creative Careers person do?

What could a department do? What could you do?

What might Academics do?

• Accept that placing students effectively in the graduate workforce is as important an outcome for a School and the University as the number of 2.1s and 1sts.

• Agree that without intervention and support the status of employability is not going to increase.

• Find ways of integrating engagement and being positive about the process

• Accept that researching a career opportunity is as good a way of practising research skills as any other research activity

• Have appropriately demanding assessments for careers / employability activities within skills and other modules?

• No careers activity without assessment

• Put employability profile data into every student handbook and onto all department web sites

• Put employability profile data into PDPs

• Use employability profile information in tutorials

Get Rid of the ‘We are nice people image’

• Offer real learning packages with real content

• Make real links with PDP agendas• Put the careers materials into

curricula• Have a look at handout

What is transferable for you?

Where could we start?• Learning Outcomes• Assessment • Small bites - 2 to 5 credits in each

of the 3 years• Big chunks - modules• Focus on short term returns - work

placements / internships at level 1

Some random ideas

• Use academic language to describe activities

• Present ideas with learning outcomes and assessments

• Be demanding of students at all times• Get students working in groups from the

start, so they support each other• Use alumni at every possible opportunity

• Try to ensure level 1 students see graduates close to their own age group

• Expect to be part of departmental and faculty structures at all levels

• Know what the benchmark statements say for relevant disciplines

• Be able to quote every department’s graduate employability statistics

• Find the opportunity to talk to directors of studies, heads of school and promote the ‘what careers can do for you’ agenda.

What would a successful employability and careers

operation look like?

• All students would have at least two meaningful engagements with careers experts each year

• All students would receive CV assistance and interview practice

• 90% of students would move to graduate jobs within three years

An Ambition?• Every undergraduate student undertakes one

piece of careers related research and assessment in the context of their discipline

• Every level 1 undergraduate is aware of and knows how to research work placement, research placement and internship opportunities appropriate to their discipline and has a CV and letter of application of the right standard to be successful if they choose to apply

• Every level 2 and 3 undergraduate is aware of and knows how to research career opportunities appropriate to their discipline; can create an evidenced curriculum vitae and letter of application, and has had an opportunity to practice interview skills

• Every postgraduate student has at least one careers tutorial introduction to researching career opportunities, resources and provision. Each taught postgraduate student has had an opportunity to develop CV and interview skills six months before they complete their degree

• Every research postgraduate student understands that a PhD provides research skills which are sought after by many graduate employers. PhD students undertake a short course in careers research, CV and interview skills as part of research training.

Thoughts

• Employability 2006-2016• It is hard to make it work• This is a great time to push it to the

foreground of the student curriculum • Universities cannot afford to ignore

it

Thank you

Questions?

© University of Reading 2006 www.reading.ac.uk/ccms

What can the curriculum do for careers?11-12 January 2007


Destinations:an introduction to the new web-based learning resource from CCMS

David StanburyJulia Horn

Outline

• Touchstones

• Design

• Content

• Destinations in the curriculum - Julia Horn

• Destinations in your institution

• Partner Fellowships piloting Destinations

When starting…

• Begin with the end in mind

• You and the student

• Key aim = something shareable

• What does it offer?– Portable– Adaptable– In-depth– Fresh– Website +

Screen shot Destinations HP

Screenshot of CMS HP – 4 eggs

• Find at http://www.rdg.ac.uk/careers-cms/home.html

http://www.rdg.ac.uk/careers-cms/home.html

Screenshot of topics HP

TOPICS

https://www.reading.ac.uk/destinations/units/topics.shtml

Frame so that the left hand drop down menus are fully visible, you’ll probably just need to loose the plane




Screenshot interviews

Topics: up close

• Lets look at Interviews

• Destinations: Interviews – Topic Introduction

• Showing drop-down menu for Preparing for Interviews LU opened up

http://www.destinations.rdg.ac.uk/units/interviews.shtml

Holding the user’s attention

• Humour

• Layout

• Accessibility

• Video

• Destinations: Interviews – Preparing for interview – Research the company

https://www.reading.ac.uk/destinations-test/units/unit-int048.shtml

Topics and activities

• To promote user engagement through– Games– Reflection and feedback

• Card sort

• Destinations: Values – Why are values important? – Identify your values

https://www.reading.ac.uk/destinations-test/flash/c-act-0022.html

How can Destinations support the development of careers education courses?

• Destinations is based on the DOTS model – DOTS guides the selection and conception of material – Topic menu includes a subdivision into the four DOTS

themes– Allows for easy re-creation of the curriculum model

used in the CMS materials previously produced by the University of Reading

Destinations and the curriculum


• Destinations allows you to select and customise the material you use with students– Enter and leave the site at any point and any level

(topic, unit, page)– No pre-determined route to follow– No references between pages


• Destinations is designed for use with a virtual learning environment (VLE) eg. Blackboard, WebCT, Moodle – The course leader creates the links to the material

and between the material – It is also possible to link to other materials or

websites, encouraging access to a variety of sources of career information

– Destinations can be the primary source of course material, or can supplement other materials. For example, Destinations can support PDP or skills work.


• Destinations will be sold with curriculum models which you can use or customise, including – Ideas for assessment tasks – Courses for different group sizes – Ideas for teaching sessions – Models which put all these elements together

Independent learning

• Destinations is also designed to encourage independent student learning – Clear layout and freedom to move around the site

encourages users to ‘roam’– Search function will help students find the material

they want– Journey Planner offers pre-planned trips based on

realistic scenarios

Supporting teaching and learning

• Destinations offers the following benefits– Based on, but not constrained by, DOTS– Freedom to innovate – Adaptable and easy to use with a VLE – Full curriculum models and/or support for courses

Sharing Destinations more widely

Dissemination

• Community of practitioners– Network groups

• Enabling innovation– Partner Fellowships– Brunel

• Accelerating change

Sharing Destinations

• What will be ‘in the box’? – The site: 9 topics and more– videos– T&L materials and curriculum models– 2 days’ support

• When?– 1 August 2007

• Cost?– £1,500 - £10,000– One-off price (not annual licence)

How will it be shared?

• Localised– Information about own university– Remove pages– Add pages– Within Destinations structure

• Customised– Content only– Your structure, design and branding

Partner Fellowships: Pilots

• Aims– Understand how the Destinations concept works in

different settings– Trail-blaze

• FREE!

• Funding for evaluation

• Expressions of interest– Documents available from 31st January– Register by 15th March

• Limited number

Finding out more

• Demonstrations today and tomorrow

• See our project site www.reading.ac.uk/ccms

• Demonstration version– Sample pages– Outline of content

• Promotional version – Guided tours

http://www.reading.ac.uk/ccms


What can the curriculum do for careers?11-12 January 2007

is it time to embed careers teaching and support in the disciplines?

Documents

employability skills

delivery of careers

careers operation

careers service staff

position of careers

student employability

employability strategy

time toembed careers