Shakib Khan, Module Leader and Lecturer at the University of Hull, London Campus, reflects on building professional confidence through seminar design.
There is a quiet assumption in higher education that if students achieve good grades, professional readiness will naturally follow. Sometimes it does. Often, it does not.
Employers increasingly value communication, collaboration, adaptability and professional confidence alongside subject knowledge. Reports from both the World Economic Forum and CBI/Pearson continue to highlight the importance of human capabilities in graduate employment. Yet many students still experience higher education primarily through assessment completion and grade optimisation.
Over the last few years of teaching postgraduate business and management students in the UK, I have increasingly reflected on this gap between academic achievement and professional readiness. A student may demonstrate excellent theoretical understanding and submit strong assignments, while still lacking confidence in communication, presentation or professional interaction.
That reflection became personal for me because I was once an international student myself.
I remember graduating with knowledge, ambition and determination, but also carrying an invisible uncertainty about confidence, communication and professional interaction within a different cultural and educational environment. Academic success alone did not automatically create professional confidence. What I needed most was rehearsal, repeated opportunities to practise speaking, presenting, collaborating and participating without fear of judgement.
That experience later changed how I approached seminars in higher education.
We often teach knowledge, but not behaviour
In business and management education especially, students are expected to communicate professionally, work collaboratively, solve problems and operate within diverse organisational environments. However, many seminar spaces still focus heavily on assessment support rather than professional practice.
This made me rethink an important question: what if seminars became spaces where students could rehearse professional behaviour before entering professional life itself?
At the University of Hull, London Campus (UHLC), I gradually began redesigning my seminars around this idea.
Rather than allowing students to remain only within familiar friendship groups, I intentionally mixed students into diverse teams. They worked together on real-world organisational case studies connected to their module and assessment themes. Each student took responsibility for a specific aspect of the task before combining their work into a collective analysis. The students then created professional presentation slides and delivered short micro-presentations in front of their peers.
Importantly, these activities were intentionally low stakes. The presentations were not graded. Instead, students received structured formative feedback focused on strengths, areas to improve and practical next steps. I deliberately avoided framing feedback around “weaknesses”. The aim was developmental rather than punitive.
Over time, something interesting started happening.
Students who were initially hesitant to speak began contributing more confidently. Group discussions became more dynamic and collaborative. Students started communicating more professionally, not because they had memorised a theoretical framework about teamwork, but because they had repeatedly practised it.
The seminar gradually became less like a traditional classroom discussion and more like a professional rehearsal environment.
Confidence develops through participation
One of the most important lessons I have learned is that confidence rarely appears suddenly. It usually develops through repeated participation in psychologically safe learning spaces.
Sometimes a student’s silence is not disengagement. It may reflect anxiety, uncertainty, language concerns or lack of confidence in professional interaction. This can be particularly relevant for international students, widening participation students and students adapting to unfamiliar academic cultures.
Research around belonging and engagement in higher education has consistently shown that students participate more actively when they feel respected, included and psychologically safe. Thomas (2012) highlights the importance of belonging in supporting student engagement and success.
This shifted my own understanding of employability.
Too often, employability becomes separated from the curriculum and relocated into occasional workshops or external careers sessions. While those initiatives remain valuable, professional confidence usually develops through repeated rehearsal inside ordinary learning spaces rather than through isolated one-off activities.
Many students do not necessarily lack intelligence or ambition. Sometimes they simply lack rehearsal space.
What changed in the classroom?
Internal student feedback collected across several cohorts at UHLC suggested strong perceived value in this seminar approach, particularly in relation to communication confidence, teamwork and employability readiness.
Students frequently described feeling more comfortable presenting ideas, participating in discussions and communicating professionally in front of others. Several students also reflected that the seminar environment felt more inclusive and supportive than traditional classroom formats.
Of course, no single teaching approach transforms every student experience. Higher education remains beautifully complex and occasionally chaotic. Human beings are wonderfully unpredictable creatures carrying laptops, anxiety and iced coffee into seminar rooms.
However, the experience reinforced an important idea for me: future-facing education is not only about curriculum modernisation or digital transformation. It is also about creating environments where students can gradually rehearse becoming professionals.
This does not reduce the importance of academic rigour. Knowledge matters deeply. Critical thinking matters deeply. But communication, collaboration, confidence and professional participation matter too.
Sometimes the most transformative educational moment is not a distinction grade or a perfectly referenced assignment. Sometimes it is the moment a previously silent student finally feels confident enough to speak and realises that their voice belongs in the room.
As higher education continues to evolve, perhaps one important question for educators is this: how often do our teaching spaces allow students to rehearse the professional behaviours we later expect them to demonstrate after graduation?
Shakib Khan is a Module Leader and Lecturer in Business Management at the University of Hull, London Campus (UHLC). His teaching practice focuses on employability, inclusive pedagogy, student confidence and experiential learning within business and management education. He is also a PhD researcher in Business and Management at Kingston University.
References
Thomas, L. (2012) What Works? Student Retention and Success Programme
Yorke, M. and Knight, P. – Embedding Employability into the Curriculum
