Careers Consultant at Imperial College, London, Katie Dallison provides the next video in our series from the contributors to the 'Employability: breaking the mould' case study compendium.
The team at Imperial developed an innovative, in-house short course for their postgraduate students to help them develop 'transferable and career-related skills' such as critical thinking, teamwork and problem solving. Following feedback from students in their postgraduate Medical faculty, they designed a bespoke 'Attributes and Aspirations' (AA) programme to try and prepare their students for life after university.
Katie explains: "[Students] were telling us that while they felt they got really good technical skills from their course, they didn't really have time, or didn't know how to, develop and plan their career, and build up those transferable skills that they knew they were going to need in their future.
"With this in mind we wanted to make AA as practical as possible so students could start implementing their skills right away. We also wanted to use solid active learning pedagogy and the best online learning tools available to us to try and make it as real as possible.
"We teach them how to reflect, and by reflecting on their progress they're able to build their knowledge from their different life experiences to help them decide what their next steps might be."
Listen to Katie explaining the course below:
A case study looking at Imperial's Attributes and Aspirations programme can be found as part of the 'Employability: breaking the mould' case study compendium. Download the compendium here.
The deadline for paper submissions for 'Employability Symposium 2021: 3E's for Wicked Problems' closes at midnight, 25 February 2021, find out more and submit your abstract here.
Find out more about Advance HE's work to support institutions prepare graduates for life beyond higher education through effectively embedding employability both in the curriculum and within extra-curricular provision.