When Coventry University launched its Project Management Degree Apprenticeship, Dr Mary Crossan (R) and Catherine Skirrow (L) were tasked with designing an employability module for the course. They explain how structured reflection can help students prepare for the jobs of the future.
Despite the increase in the number of students pursuing degrees in the UK over the past thirty years, the clamour from industry for relevant technical and professional skills hasn’t diminished. Added to that was a recognition that the increasing requirement for a degree was excluding many talented individuals from progressing in their careers because they hadn’t followed a traditional academic path. What was needed was a route that underpinned vocational training with a recognised academic qualification, and the modern Degree Apprenticeship was born, with the first programmes starting in 2015.
Nearly a decade on, the degree apprenticeship has become an important strand in the widening participation initiatives of many UK HEIs. Prospective students can choose from apprenticeships in subjects ranging from engineering to law or digital marketing, and they have become an attractive option in a post-austerity era when the prospect of student debt is a disincentive for many young people. And the appeal of the degree apprenticeship is that it isn’t just for the traditional school-leaver; in 2022/23 48% of people starting apprenticeships were aged 25 and over (Foley, 2021).
But Degree Apprenticeships aren’t just about technical skills and academic qualifications. Successive reports by the World Economics Forum on the Future of Jobs (2020, 2023) have predicted that workers will see unprecedented change in the nature of work and the skills they require to remain employable as new technologies threaten to displace traditional jobs. That means that workers need the ability to adapt and learn, and – according to the WEF – to manage their own development.
That’s why the Project Management Degree Apprenticeship we developed at Coventry University includes a bespoke module on Continuing Professional Development. Modelled on an existing undergraduate module, it encourages apprentices to engage with the Association for Project Management’s extensive CPD offering and opportunities to network, as well as prompting them to undertake workplace development and record their activities in an e-portfolio. Central to the assessment for this module is a written reflection where students demonstrate awareness of their own skills and strengths and identify career development goals.
There is good evidence of the benefits of reflective practice in helping apprentices to apply classroom learning to their professional contexts. Soft skills, such as team working, critical thinking, self-management and accountability were among those identified by participants in research by Konstantinou and Miller (2020). But our attempts to build focused soft skill development into our module received a lukewarm reception from our apprentices – why?
To address this question, we embarked on a small qualitative research project entailing focus groups of 3 successive cohorts of apprentices. After each focus group we tweaked the module for the next cohort, resulting in three different approaches, all of which had their pros and cons according to the participants.
Using our undergraduate module as the blueprint for the programme proved least popular with our apprentices, in part due to the diversity of the cohorts; they worked in sectors that included the NHS, the rail industry, IT and the civil service, and they ranged in age from 18 to over 55. The younger apprentices tended to welcome its structured nature, whilst those with more experience preferred the freedom to design their own pathway, but there was a consensus that activities geared towards basic employability weren’t appropriate: “some of that stuff probably isn’t very useful like writing a CV …. ‘cause we’ve already got CVs”.
Like many students, our apprentices reported being weary of online learning, so we wanted to inject more hands-on skill development into our second iteration of the module such as people management. However, their differences in terms of seniority, experience and career aspirations made it impossible to devise a menu of topics that would suit eveyone’s diverse needs, and they felt that real skills development belonged in the workplace.
Moving to our final model, we brought the focus back to the tripartite relationship, starting with a baseline development needs analysis. By formalising the involvement of the apprentices’ workplace mentors, we could encourage them to explore ways of building their skills through practical application in their jobs, rather than theoretical classroom discussion. Teaching was delivered by an experienced project management professional, who dedicated some seminars to preparing students for their APM qualification, provided contextualised career development examples and was able to integrate the APM’s opportunities to enhance professional development. David Ellis, curriculum lead for Project Management, believes that this has helped students to engage more meaningfully with the APM and its wealth of opportunity.
Reflecting on this initiative two years on, David concludes that, whilst one size certainly doesn’t fit all apprentices, there has been genuine value in fostering reflective practice that enables apprentices to ‘diagnose’ their own development needs and take ownership of plans to address them. As work and jobs are transformed at a faster pace than ever before, anticipating and responding to change might be the most valuable skills of all.
Dr Mary Crossan, an Advance HE Senior Fellow, has 20 years’ experience in a variety of academic and management roles. Now based at Ulster University, her research focuses on employability, Degree Apprenticeships and the student experience. Catherine Skirrow, an Advance HE Fellow, is an employability specialist at Coventry University. She is currently conducting research into the experiences of young professionals starting their careers in hybrid jobs.
References:
Foley, N. (2021). Apprenticeship statistics. (House of Commons Library Briefing Paper no. 06113).
Konstantinou, I. and Miller, E. “Investigating Work-Integrated Learning and Its Relevance to Skills Development in Degree Apprenticeships.” Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning 10, no. 5 (October 13, 2020): 767–81.
World Economic Forum. “The Future of Jobs Report 2020.” Geneva, 2020.
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