Embedding Employability Workshops
Workshop delivered by winners of the 2017 Higher Education Academy Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE).
Employability in HE has come to be interpreted as preparation for life, not just a job, and is playing an increasing role in the evaluation of teaching within the formal and informal curriculum. To embed employability within a degree programme means that life-skills are contextualised, authentic and developed within the discipline over the whole course of the degree.
Our workshops are a guide to embedding "employability" in the curriculum based on research commissioned by HEA and the hands-on experience of the Natural Sciences CATE team at Leicester. It is designed to support those involved in designing and delivering undergraduate teaching: module convenors, programme directors, educational developers and those working career support. Participants will learn about the different ways of embedding life skills in the formal and informal curriculum with illustrative examples and with a focus on authentic assessment.
In the workshop you will act as consultants to a (fictitious) department attempting to enhance its graduate employability. You will be addressing issues around planning an integrated curriculum and assessment strategies and the process of change management. To guide you, you will be introduced to a framework for embedding employability based on an HEA commissioned survey of the literature. This will illustrate the many different scales and types of intervention that support the embedding of graduate employability, together with various examples from our own experience. We will encourage you to reflect on and discuss how you might apply some of these ideas in your own context.
Our workshops for 2019 are now over. Details of future workshops will be added as they become available.
If you any queries about the workshops please email nsadmin@le.ac.uk or call +44 (0)116 373 6620.
Resources
- Embedding Employability in Physics degrees at Portsmouth
- Embedding Employability in Engineering at UCL
- Graduate Employability at the University of Leicester
- Embedding Employability Workshop (PowerPoint, 4mb)
- Workshop Programme and Handout (PDF, 350kb)
- Innovative Pedagogical Practices – Undergraduates as Interdisciplinary Researchers (PDF, 289kb)
Enquiries and consultancy
The team will be happy to answer specific questions concerning their experience of embedding employability in the curriculum.
Additionally, members of the team are available on a consultancy basis to provide support and advice through:
- Individual or ongoing consultations on specific projects through face-to-face or video meetings.
- Bespoke workshops for staff.
Please contact Dr Sarah Gretton in the first instance, who will be happy to discuss options.