To Be Employed Is to Be at Risk, to Be Employable Is to Be Secure

“To be employed is to be at risk, to be employable is to be secure” Peter Hawkins, The Art of Building Windmills Delivering Employability Staff Development Day

The intended outcomes of this workshop are to give you an understanding of what transferable employability skills are, where they already feature in your courses, how to make them more explicit to your students, how to identify missing skills and how to incorporate them into the curriculum.

AIMS By the end of the workshop you will have . Experienced auditing your own skills . Had an opportunity to begin an audit of a module / course for employability skills – both implicit and explicit . Have considered how and where you might include priority skills . Examined and used a tool to help you further embed skills into your course, a copy of which you will take away with you. . Had an opportunity to experience some resources / discuss ideas / and good practice with colleagues

Session 1 - Definitions and context – what does employability mean?

Why is it high on the agenda within HE and why is it important to you, your students and UCE? Future thinking – use Employability Card sort to get issues out in open

1. Introductions: ascertain what they are hoping to gain from the day. Write these up.

2. Outline of learning outcomes for the day-try and link in to what they have said

3. Activity: their definition of “employability” Ask them to break it down into employability skills. Compare their definitions to Harvey’s (2003) (2002) (1998) and Peter Hawkins. Highlight definitions that came from my research. (OHPs)

** Employability is not just about securing a job** give Harvey’s quote on this (2003)

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 4. Why is there a need for employability skills? Use relevant quotes and information to generate discussion. Highlight some reasons;  changes to Graduate labour market and the implications  Impact of technology,  Dearing, DfEE, Harris, QAA

5. Reflecting on employability skills; Courses may enable students to develop relevant skills, but some students still fail to recognise the skills they have and the evidence for these. They may lack confidence in writing about their skills and discussing them. They may not understand their own responsibility in making themselves employable. ***give feedback from my research with students***

Activity: Employability skills ex. Ask them to individually complete this. Discuss. Highlight how we use this to encourage students to reflect on their skills and the evidence for them.

Emphasise the importance of students being able to sell their employability (skills/qualities/) effectively on paper and in interview. Talk about how UCE Careers can support students/tutors with this.

6. Benefits to staff, students and UCE of integrating employability into their courses?

Activity ask them to consider this in order to generate discussion (if time)

Benefits for staff and UCE; take their findings, compare to mine from research and highlight issues such as;

 Meeting QAA code of practice for CEIG (2001)  Meeting QAA standards  PDP-Progress Files  Destinations-Performance Indicators for employment  Marketing courses to potential students

Benefits for Students: Re-iterate research into what employers want from Graduates. (Harvey, Hawkins, my research etc).  Enabling students to understand the relevance of their studies to graduate labour market  Motivating them re their studies, enabling them to understand the relevance of it/value of it to the world of work.  Giving them a realistic insight into the labour market and changing nature of graduate employment.  Developing confidence in students,  Encouraging and enhancing self- awareness.  Enabling them to develop skills they will use throughout their careers

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003  Providing them with the skills to manage their own career development.  Enabling them to develop the skills to work effectively within graduate jobs.

7. How can we support you in enhancing students employability and meeting UCE objectives re employability? Introduce Employability pack. Give a brief overview of pack

8. Complementing each other. Reiterate point re encouraging students to reflect on their skills and learning needs. Re-iterate how we can support them with this and other aspects of their career planning.

“Some degrees give students many skills but fail to provide the career education and guidance which enables students to use these skills to obtain graduate level posts”

10.30 Break: Coffee: Opportunity to look at pack

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 Session 2 AUDITING YOUR COURSE FOR EMPLOYABILITY

10.45 1. Introduction to the session 5 minutes

LEARNING OUTCOMES: By the end of this session you will:  Have an understanding of the benefits of mapping and in particular auditing a module / course for skills  Have had an opportunity to try mapping  Have seen examples of mapping and auditing and had an opportunity to ask questions from someone who’s done it!  Have had an opportunity to begin auditing your module / course

- It’s about students using skills - Acknowledging professional body requirements - Acknowledging course benchmark skills - Acknowledgement of additional skills developed - Exposes gaps in provision - Rewards existing provision

Making skills development explicit as an aid to career management Students being able to evidence, recognise, articulate, and apply Employability Skills

10.55 2. Mapping and Auditing 40 minutes

- Full audit process OHP Diagram + handout outline what David did – hand out his mapping exercise and audit – allow time for reading. Questions - Mapping process BMus Mapping- handout (Course aims/Course components/Employability Skills)

- Example of an audit BMus Audit – handout hand out Geoffs audit – another example

- Example of an audit BSc Management - handout have now seen two examples of approaches being used successfully here at UCE. Others ongoing – eg MSc Computing; MMus PG Dip Professional Portfolio module

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 11.25 3. “Delivering Employability – Section 9/Appendix 5 30 minutes AUDIT OF EMPLOYABILITY FEATURES

Handout - AUDIT OF EMPLOYABILITY FEATURES Ask the group to take 10 minutes – tick box audit their course/module/session -

Work together in pairs for 10 mins to question each other and start to evidence the ticks completing the column.

Emphasise the importance of showing specifically where the students will be using employability skills.

USE PROMPTS to aid discussions. Share your evidence with each other and help each other to fill gaps.

PROMPTS i)“Academic Study – what skills do you gain?” Handout at start of the pairs work The emphasis here is on student understanding of skills development. It also reveals the multiple skills development potential of course-related tasks. How would your audit stand up to this level of scrutiny by your students???

ii) Employer competency requirements / SAF could be shown here.

iii)Emphasise throughout that the “Delivering Employability” file itself is a source to help fill the gaps too. (ideas for sessions, assessment, resources).

12.05 4. Feedback 10 mins any comments / difficulties so far?

12.15 Lunch

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 Session 3 Designing programmes to meet skill needs

LEARNING OUTCOMES - OHP

By the end of this session you will:  Have had an opportunity to raise issues surrounding entitlement to and delivery and assessment of Careers Education  Have used the Delivering Employability resource to consider how to implement / integrate a priority skill into your course

Future thinking – follow Musicians plan and have them working in small groups on a skill and coming up with ways it could be integrated

1.15 1. Using the audit - Introduction to designing Curricula 5 mins

The auditing exercise will have helped:  identify the skills the course already explicitly delivers  the skills that have priority for the particular course – eg if vocational or has specific outcomes re destinations eg self employment or re subject  identify the skills which are implicit / missing.

The next step is to see if there is a place in the curriculum where the missing / implied skills can be further developed

1. 20 2. Issues in Careers Education (CE) 40 mins Before we can identify where in the curriculum skills can be developed it’s worth debating explicit “careers education” aspects of the curriculum versus cross curricula “employability skills”

Divide into 2 groups and ask them to spend 10 mins discussing (assigned) of the following topics:  what should the student entitlement to careers education be? You may want to consider whether this should be a free standing module or something integrated throughout the curriculum; also issues surrounding who delivers it  is there a role for assessment in CE? You may want to consider the question “should a student be able to fail careers?” also how to get students to value CE if it is not assessed. 10 mins  Groups to record issues raised on flipchart

Pairs / groups feedback to whole – discussion 30 mins

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 2.00 3. What will work for you and your course? 30 mins Now is the time to do some thinking and planning about what you want to include / build into your course. Later you will have a chance to consider how to resource this. i) Choose one skill that is a high priority on your course ii) Take 10 mins to:  examine the relevant section in the Delivering Employability file  what could you do to “deliver” this skill  can you think of anything not mentioned in the file?  Handout – Individual skill template 10 mins iii) Share your findings with your partner playing devils / angel advocate 5 mins iv) Bring to the whole group anything unresolved 15 mins

2.30 close to coffee

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 Session 4 ACTION PLANNING

LEARNING OUTCOMES (OHP) By the end of this session you will have  Greater awareness of the support available to you from the Careers Service  A set of objectives/action points with timescales  Greater knowledge of how to use Delivering Employability

Future thinking – use Bioscience employability audit?

1. Summary of workshop a) 5 minutes drawing out themes and learning points from the day about:

What is employability? Mapping and auditing and making employability more explicit Issues surrounding Careers Education Involving students in the auditing process b) Why employability? OHP  Careers Education, Information & Guidance - CEIG Policy – born out of Harris review and QAA Code of Practice  League Tables! Employability / Graduate work / Student Support and Guidance / retention & progression (motivator)  Progress Files – in particular the PDP element  Learning & Teaching Strategy – Employability strand

2. Action Planning

If the day is about embedding employability into courses and making this a more coherent and explicit activity within teaching and learning, the next phase must therefore be to look at what you might do as a result of today. a) Question - What needs to be done within your course/module to embed employability and make it more explicit?

DISCUSS – pairs - then feedback to whole b) Question - What can you do to move the process forward?

HANDOUT - Take 10 minutes to make lists of practical steps you can take to embed employability and make it more specific in the next 3 months and the next year.

Collect feedback. Make point about exchange of ideas.

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003 3. How can the Careers Service support you…. OHP

 Supporting exchange of practice via email group and electronic version of Delivering Employability.

 Providing assistance with:  Planning  Delivery  Advice  Resources  Information  Evaluation  Updating the resource file - a living document

………. to help develop courses which assist students to become employable.

4. Conclusions

Summarise learning against their desired outcomes.

Summarise our learning and action points from the day.

Thank participants and contributors.

5. Evaluation. Handout

Ruth Lawton UCE Careers Service

UCE Careers Service – Delivering Employability – Staff Development Day plan 2003