Dr Val Chapman & Will Bowen-Jones Developing students’ employability skills – helping them stand out from the crowd Future Directions Conference 2014 Global Graduates: Enabling Flexible Learning

What does the UseMyAbility website do? The web resource offers practical advice about the development of employability skills and guidance on how to make teaching more inclusive in order to enhance/maximise student participation and success.

Intended outcomes As a result of engaging in this session participants should be able to: 1.Describe the online ‘Employability Skills Profiler’ (ESP) that helps students to: enhance their understanding of the nature of employability skills and how they may be improved; reflect on and record their achievements, identifying areas in need of development; write better job applications; develop evidence based CVs; be more effective at job interviews; 2. Deconstruct an employability skill

enhance students’ understanding of the nature of employability skills and how they may be improved; enable students to establish a benchmark from which to track their development across a range of 16 employability skills; help students to write better job applications, respond more appropriately to job interview questions, and develop evidence based CVs, making use of the online audit tool and their experience within the project; promote the use of a self-audit tool by academic staff across the department. 4 The project aimed to:

Project Research Overview Baseline Questionnaire Investigated students understanding of the term employability Generic session to introduce audit; Presentation of employability skills. Employability skills and discussion of employability presented through generic PowerPoint Completion of Audit; Interviews Students given time frame to complete audit Respondents to survey invited to interview

Students’ Initial Perceptions of Employability “How likely you are to get a job”. “The stuff you have to make someone want to give you a job over someone else”. “How well suited you are to a specific job”.

Student responses following engagement with ESP “I will be taking it [excel document] along with me to interviews, keeping it up to date and bulking it up with the bits I said I was lacking.” “There were a few skills that I didn’t rate as highly as employers did which has completely changed my views on it.” “Having this in place is very useful and it does help somebody like me.”

Teaching Employability Earliest reference to it on HEA website: ‘Employability: Developing a Framework for Policy Analysis’ (1998) Hillage J & Pollard E In recent years proliferation of Employability events, resources and publications… But when it comes to teaching – are we sometimes guilty of making assumptions? Is an employability skill something we consciously, deliberately and explicitly embed in a learning task? So that students are able to recall and evidence it at the end of a module, let alone at the point of drafting a personal statement

TASK With a partner, deconstruct the employability skill, ‘adaptability’, into 6 sub aspects framed as questions. e.g. Interpersonal skills: 1.Are you good at listening to others? 2.Are you able to manage conflict effectively without getting annoyed or upset? 3.Do you behave appropriately in the different situations in which you find yourself? 4.Are you able to establish rapport with others quickly and easily? 5.Can you adapt readily to the context in which you find yourself? 6.Can you collaborate effectively with others?

Employability Skills Profiler (ESP)

Adaptability

(2. Solving problems creatively) ‘Whilst being a sports coach for a summer camp a problem which I encountered was being moved to a small facility due to change in the weather. Due to the small space, I had to change my planned activity. Therefore, I had to come up with a suitable activity for 5-7 year olds which would keep them engaged for the hour session. I created games surrounding the book 'We're going on a Bear Hunt' incorporating small activities and games.’ Adaptability

Interpersonal Adaptability

I have been a member of a guide unit leading young girls aged between 6 and 16 years for 4 years. Part of this also includes me working with people both younger and older than myself. I have worked with a wide range of people through my sport of figure skating, from adults (18 years plus)to children (5 to 18 years). I have also worked with people of all ages with mental and physical disabilities. Yes I believe so at my work I am a relief worker and every week I could be working in a different centre with different adults and children, as a result with my personality I feel I could fit in anywhere I was asked to, Yes I have worked for nearly two years within an environment where I have had to work with a range of people Adaptability

Powerpoint presentation

Key aspects of the ESP resource Easily customisable to own needs/objectives; Embed in modules/courses in a number of ways and for a variety of purposes; –monitor students’ progress; –ascertain the efficacy of own teaching in developing employability skills by implementing the ESP with own modules’ cohorts; –assess the impact of various interventions such as work placement or mentoring; –use fewer/more employability skills according to needs; –monitor development of lower order skills in year1 and higher order skills in subsequent years; –gain a snapshot of a cohort’s level of skills; –longitudinal studies; –employ post graduate students to oversee administration.

Future Development

Questions?