Practical approaches for curriculum design
If we are to take up the challenge of maximising students’ opportunities to take ownership of their futures, we need to consider the ways in which programmes can be designed to do this. A number of publications offer useful advice for institutions on how to review curricula to embed skills for employment (see, for example, Cole and Tibby 2013; Knight and Yorke 2006a and 2006b; Smith 2012). The UK Higher Education Academy (2016) has also produced a set of studies highlighting principles for embedding employability into curricula.
However, a number of the design features and pedagogies inherent in the Connected Curriculum framework already lend themselves to enhancing students’ opportunities for developing work-related attributes. We revisit those briefly here, and look at additional ways in which learning opportunities can be built into the curriculum that will enable students to graduate with confidence.
Our emphasis so far has been upon research-based and enquiry-based pedagogies and also on addressing the structure of taught programmes to create (or enhance) a connected throughline of activity that allows students to develop over time. We have begun to look, too, at the role played by student assessments in shaping their learning experiences and in enabling them to express their new learning to others (see further, Chapter 7). These features all engage students actively in the development of a wide range of transferable skills as an intrinsic part of their learning and assessment activities.
Tynjälä, Välimaa and Sarja (2003) find that institutions are already narrowing the gap between the kinds of learning students experience in their studies and that experienced in the workplace. Learning in the workplace is typically less formal, more collaborative and more specifically situated in a given ‘real world’ context, whereas academic learning has traditionally focused on broad principles. However, ‘pedagogical models such as problem-based learning, project learning and collaborative learning have characteristics that simulate authentic situations in working life or may be even based on them’ (2003, 152).
What different ways are there of enabling students to make explicit and productive connections between their academic learning and workplace learning during their programmes of study? They are many and varied, and institutions and departments are best equipped to make their own choices about what will be effective within the context of particular programmes.
Blackmore et al. (2016, 20) distinguish between ‘bolt-on studies’, defined as ‘activities that sit outside of specific academic modules, but still relate to the curriculum’, and activities embedded into the curriculum itself. Bolt-on studies include ‘extra-curricular opportunities, workshops, or optional courses [which are] not a part of the essential credit-bearing modules in a degree programme’. Optional opportunities beyond the curriculum have the benefit of giving a wider range of choices and freedoms than a planned curriculum can typically manage. They may have challenges, though, with respect to equality of opportunity: students whose ‘spare’ time is taken up with duties such as caring or paid work are less likely to be able to benefit from them.
Embedding work-related learning activities in the curriculum, and enabling students to analyse and articulate these, can take a wide range of forms. Some are illustrated in Table 6.1. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but the range is indicative of the many and varied waysin which students are already developing their work-related knowledge and skills, and of where they might have additional opportunities extended to them.
Table 6.1 Activities connecting students with workplace learning
| Learning activity | Opportunities and Challenges | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Learning the knowledge content and skills inherent in the home discipline(s) | Students’ development of discipline-specific knowledge and skills is the central focus of any programme. Depth in subject-specific knowledge and understanding can be enhanced by illustrating these with reference to work-related challenges but this is dependent upon forging authentic links. For subjects not directly linked with particular professions, inviting alumni to discuss with students how the subject content and skills have helped them in diverse work-related contexts can be helpful. |
| 2 | Learning through signature tasks and assessments in the home discipline(s) | Each discipline has its typical assessment methods, both informal and formal, and many departments now include ‘authentic’ assessments (Knight 2002), which mirror the types of tasks needed in the workplace. A well designed spectrum of tasks enables students to develop skills such as teamwork, digital literacies and project management. These ‘soft’ skills can be assessed alongside subject-specific knowledge and skills, using appropriate assessment criteria with agreed weightings. For example, a group oral presentation can include criteria for content (e.g. critical analysis) and also for form (e.g. the structure and delivery of the presentation; the use of digital media). Randomly challenging students with different types of task, without the opportunity to build up skills and confidence, is unhelpful. However, well planned variations in tasks and assessments which build on one another will stretch and engage students. |
| 3 | Learning through engaging in active enquiry | Learning through active enquiry includes research, problem-solving, collaborative projects and object-based learning. These complex assignments, both collaborative and independent, can mirror closely workplace activities. Students need regular guidance, with dialogue, so that they can get the most from these more open-ended tasks. The guidance can include prompts to help students appreciate the range of skills they are developing. |
| 4 | Learning through engaging in enterprise and/or entrepreneurship | Broadly defined, enterprise education ‘provides individuals with the skills, tools and insights to enable them to create ideas and make them happen’ (Blackmore et al. 2016, 28). Entrepreneurship is defined as ‘the application of enterprise skills specifically to creating and growing organisations in order to identify and build on opportunities’ (QAA 2012). Students can be stretched, within or beyond the taught curriculum, by engaging in broadly based, creative, typically collaborative tasks in which they have to show initiative and resourcefulness. Entrepreneurial activities are usually but not always undertaken alongside the taught curriculum. Students can be explicitly prompted to see the connections between these experiences and those needed for the workplace. |
| 5 | Learning through making, creating and/or performing | Making new objects (in any subject), producing works of art and putting on performances all develop a broad range of skills and dispositions, such as time management and leadership, along with creativity. Such activities give students something unique to show future employers. Students may need to be prompted, however, to be able to articulate clearly the skills and personal qualities their productions have demonstrated, and their relevance to challenges in other contexts. |
| 6 | Learning by engaging with broad societal themes | Students explore a crosscutting theme, for example sustainability (QAA 2014), either within a programme, across programmes (for example, via a cross-disciplinary module), or via extra-curricular opportunities. Following a societal theme throughout their studies can give students confidence in looking at that field from a range of perspectives, as well as considering the values that they can take into the workplace. |
| 7 | Learning | Students set out to find out about workplace opportunities. Careers centres and alumni can help here, as faculty members may not be best placed to advise students in the rapidly changing world of work. In some programmes, it might be appropriate for students to investigate an aspect of working life and/or a specific profession, and/or engage in work shadowing, as part of the formal curriculum. |
| 8 | Learning through study and/or work abroad | Students benefit greatly from studying and/or working abroad (European Union 2014). Studying abroad and learning additional languages are among the most effective ways of developing skills and experiences that can be demonstrated to future employers. Skills developed, including interpersonal skills, resilience and openness to new experiences, are highly valued. |
| 9 | Learning through volunteering and other extra-curricular activities | Students participate in activities ranging from following personal interests (e.g. in music or sport) to engaging in wider opportunities provided by the institution (e.g. working as a student intern; becoming a student representative; participating in university-wide events and talks; participating in Student Union activities). The range of opportunities is so wide, and students’ engagement with them so variable, that it is not easy to capture the benefits they are making to students in helping to prepare them for work. Reflective analyses of these wider experiences can, however, be explored in a personal or professional log or blog, and even in an assessed programme-wide portfolio (Chapter 7). |
| 10 | Learning through becoming a leader and ‘agent for change’ in their institution | Institutions invite students to run ‘change projects’, with the aim of benefiting current and future student cohorts (Healey 2016; UCL 2016h). Run at institutional and/or departmental level, such schemes can be mutually beneficial for students and the institution. Students can be invited to conceptualise, design, lead on (or participate in) and be rewarded for change projects. This entails managing a funded project, managing resources and time, and presenting project outcomes to an audience. Experience of this kind is excellent for students’ future employment prospects, as well as connecting students with departmental and institutional communities. |
| 11 | Service-learning | Students participate in a community-based project or activity, typically in collaboration with other students, for example by contributing to the work of a local charity. Direct engagement with the community for mutual benefit, as part of the overall aims and ethos of a programme of study, can provide excellent learning experiences as well as activities which are meaningful in their own right. Reflective analysis of the project and the student’s role in it can form part of their summative assessment. Room needs to be given in the assessment criteria for learning from mistakes and difficulties, as well as from obvious successes. |
| 12 | Work-based learning | Students undertake a programme which is orientated towards a specific profession and/or workplace setting, and which has been designed from the outset to embed work-based learning throughout the programme, for example with mandatory work placements (Boud and Solomon 2001). These experiences are typically assessed through students’ analyses of their own work via a professional log and/or credit-bearing assignment. The extent to which students are prepared for this experience, and are helped to bring their academic learning into their workplace challenges, varies; they can benefit from discussing some of these connections before the placement starts. |
The ways in which departments and programme leaders select from – and add to – these options will depend on many contextual factors. Useful practices for most programmes, however, include:
Designing some student learning activities that mirror the ‘messy’ ways in which learning takes place in the workplace. Asking students to address challenges as they arise during their studies by using their own initiative to investigate solutions, by tracking down and tapping into relevant expertise (whether in-house or external) and by collaborating effectively with their peers are examples of activities that will prepare them for the typically unstructured learning demands of the workplace.
Requiring students explicitly to analyse and articulate their learning, both in core disciplinary areas and more widely, and its relevance to the workplace at intervals through their study. Attention needs to be paid to how and when students will be asked explicitly to analyse and articulate their developing skills, values and attributes. Developing these attributes unknowingly does not help students to articulate connections they have made between academic and work-related learning (Knight and Yorke 2006b), and this is an important aspect of this dimension of the Connected Curriculum framework.
Building in a core portfolio and/or summative task, for example through a series of Connections modules and/or a capstone module (see Chapter 3), in which students describe clearly the skills and attributes they have developed, in ways which are meaningful to the student personally and authentically linked to subject knowledge.
Ensuring that some assessments are addressed to diverse audiences and so develop a wide range of digital and communication skills. This theme will be addressed further in the next chapter.