The College of Social
Sciences Graduate Skills
Programme (GSP)
Dr Dickon Copsey: College of Social Sciences Employability Officer and
GSP Coordinator
Karen Sawyer: Final year politics undergraduate and GSP Tutor
Katharina Koenig: Final year economics with business economics
undergraduate and GSP Tutor
1. What is GSP?
2. Development and strategic
drivers
3. Engagement and evaluation
4. Future developments
5. Tutor views
6. Question and answer
http://www.glasgow.ac.uk/gsp
GSP workshop:
Schedule
1. What is the Graduate
Skills Programme?
• Employability programme
launched October 2010
• Undergraduate and
postgraduate taught
• Transferable skills
developed through
academic studies, extracurricular, and workrelated activities
• Voluntary, certificated
GSP Elements and
activities
• 4 GSP Elements
• ‘Sessions’, ‘selfdirected activities’ and
‘workshops’
• GSP staff, Careers
Service, Student
Learning Service, SRC,
Student Volunteer
Service, Student
Enterprise, graduate
employers
Reflection table:
Example
Key incident table:
Example
Summary paragraph:
Example
Personal Development
Plan: Example
Mahara ePortfolios
2. Development and
strategic drivers
• Development
– Undergraduate and postgraduate;
Academic colleagues; Careers Service, SLS,
SRC; Graduate employers
• Student context
– Lack of engagement with PDP (Cashman
2007)
– Active students unaware of value of activity
– Strategic reason for engaging with PDP
–
Lack of awareness of:
–
Employer skills (eg. CBI) and how to evidence
– Range of services/activities across university (eg.
Universum survey)
– Transferability of academic skills to workplace
Policy background
–
PDP Policy & Action Plan (2007-08)
“PDP will provide a framework to help students: make sense of the
experiences available to them at Glasgow University and how they
relate to personal, educational or career-related goals; Learn more
about the variety of development opportunities on offer; Summarise
their student experience, reflect on, record and recognise ‘critical’
events and gather evidence of achievements and skills that are
essential for academic performance, CV and career development”
–
L&T Strategy and College (Faculty) LTP
–
QAA Enhancement theme: Graduates for the 21st Century
–
HEA ‘PDP and Employability’ in Learning and Employability series
–
Researcher development framework
–
GAWG and GA Research Project
Methodology
• ‘Linked’ model (Atlay, 2009)
• Learning process:
–
–
–
–
Experience activities and sessions
Reflect on (and describe/record ) what
done
Theorise skills that can be extrapolated
from activities
Plan for future personal and
professional development through
plans and templates
• Academic, personal and
employability strands
• Peer support (tutors as ‘role models’;
group work and sharing experiences)
3. Engagement
and evaluation
GSP Participants
Postgraduate taught
307
Undergraduate
163
GSP Participation
Induction/ePort. SLS
ExtraWork-related Jobs and
workshops
Sessions curricular learning
careers
179
277
182
199
370
GSP ePortfolios = 40
46 GSP respondents (45% UG and 55% PGT)
Evaluation:
GSP workshops
Evaluation:
GSP workshops
GSP End of
year evaluation
GSP End of
year evaluation
• GSP helps:
–
to develop students' confidence in the
academic and transferable skills which will
help them in their academic studies and
their future careers (94%)
–
students to talk and write formally about
their academic and transferable skills
(100%)
–
students to market themselves to potential
employers (88%)
GSP End of
year evaluation
Most useful aspect of GSP
–
I found reflecting back on activities and techniques I used in the past the most beneficial part of the
ePortfolio this year as I was concentrating on my Academic Skills. Next year I hope to expand on all
aspects of GSP when completing other sections.
–
Being able to talk one-on-one with the organisers of the programme and go through the ePortfolios
on an individual basis.
–
The Mahara ePortfolios were the most useful as they allow you to record the key transferable skills
which you have learned and this can be presented to potential employers, which is very useful in
distinguishing yourself from other candidates.
–
Forced me to reflect on my skills. It is an important service to a lot of students if they want to prepare
for future employment because they won't be prompted to market themselves anywhere else until it
could be too late. I now feel like I am on track to gain a variety of skills from my university years.
–
Encouraging me to document all the skills I have developed and the activities I have participated in
Least useful
aspect of GSP
–
I feel that I need to consolidate my use of Mahara, but this is probably a personal goal /
mahara was a little confusing and it was sometimes difficult to insert information
–
No / I didn't really find anything not useful as it was how I used each aspect togather which
worked and I gained important knowledge and understanding of my future employability.
–
I thought it was really good on the whole. I think the 'points' system could be explained in a
clearer way in the books. When explained by the organisers in person, it was much clearer.
–
The sessions were sometimes a little dry, and would help if there was some group
exercises/other form of student participation.
–
Perhaps there would be more of an incentive to attend the help/enquiry sessions if they were
placed at a later time in the day or twice in one week.
How could we
improve GSP?
•
I think more examples would be useful, however obviously these examples are something which will
come with time.
•
better advertisement, I found out about the service by accident. / the way to let students join /
Encourage more people to take part!
•
It is often difficult to attend all of the workshops therefore if there were more options in terms of
attending these it would improve the number of sessions I could have attended / probably by scheduling
meets at times not conflicting with lectures.
•
The model of it is sound. Support is offered but students do the bulk of the work. Again I wouldn't say I
experienced enough of it to recommend any improvements.
•
more detailed session on negotiating and using Mahara / Perhaps make entering the data into Mahara
require a little less computer-savvy. Pre-prepared portfolios could be available to save all the time it took
to format and suchlike.
•
i think it will be better, if we can get more chances to communicate with hr managers.
•
Perhaps more group discussions where members can share stories and experiences; they could
receive feedback on their relevance to the work world and get them to start reflecting early on.
4. Future Developments:
2011/12
•
Re-mapping GSP skills framework against
Graduate Attributes matrix
•
Replace ‘example’ ePortfolios with ‘templates’
•
Course approval to ensure transcript recognition
and Adviser of Studies buy-in
•
Additional workshop on reflective writing (eg. Add
reflective writing example/blog to ePortfolios?)
•
More reflection on discipline specific skills within
Academic skills ePortfolio
•
Increased peer feedback on ePortfolios
•
Refine evaluation process
•
Review marketing of GSP to prospective students
5. Tutor views
More information
GSP overview:
http://www.glasgow.ac.uk/gsp
GSP ePortfolio examples and templates
http://portfolio.gla.ac.uk/view/view.php?id=833
Mahara guides:
http://cterport.ed.uiuc.edu/technologies_folder/mahara-tutorials
http://eportfoliosineducation.info/#/mahara-help/4532527452
GSP Coordinator: Dr Dickon Copsey
College Employability Officer
tel + 44 (0) 141 330 4570
Email: [email protected]
http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/socialsciences/info/students/employability/
Extra slides
• Focus on generic competencies rather than subject specific
skills can “help resist creeping vocationalism with regard
course content and legitimise the continuing value of
traditional academic disciplines”.
• “as these generic competencies can also be developed
through extra-curricular activities, it can reaffirm the value of
the wider-student experience”
(HEA, PDP and Employability, p. 12, 2009)
Extra slides: What is a Professional
Development Portfolio?
• Provide a body of evidence which demonstrates your career development
and professionalism
–
Demonstrate your own insight into your professional growth by reflecting on the themes, trends and
patterns that cut across your undergraduate and postgraduate studies/research projects/work
experience/employment history
• Enable you to practice reflective learning and thinking
• Reflect on your achievements, qualifications and other external
assessments
• Employ self assessment as a tool to develop goals for the future
• Match skills, qualifications, interests and competencies with potential
career paths
–
Demonstrate a commitment to planned career development and awareness of the importance of
lifelong learning to develop professional competency