October 7, 2011, by Toby Cope

Engaging with the local community through the Advantage Award

When you come to University you are often moving to a new area and joining a new community. You may want to get involved in local community activities but be unsure of how to go about this, and that’s where we can help! The University of Nottingham has a long history of contributing  to the local community and here at the Advantage Award we encourage this by offering modules which focus on community engagement.

We have several exciting new modules this year, such as the Citizenship and Civil Society module run by the University’s Community Partnerships team. The module gives you an opportunity to engage in discussion about how your current volunteering and community engagement activities fit within the socio-political policy context of the moment. You’ll also hear from guest speakers from the third sector and social enterprises, and academics working in this area help to bring the topic alive.

A number of Academic Schools within the University have also championed community engagement by running modules of their own as part of the Award. For example, the School of English Studies have a Literacy Volunteers module and the School of Education has its own Community Engagement module in which you get the opportunity to plan and deliver exciting events such as MayFest and Mouthy Poets.

The Business School are leading two exciting community engagement modules, Sharing Cultures and Community Projects. The Sharing Culture programme is aimed at forging closer links between international, EU and home students and the local community. You will have the opportunity to develop and deliver practical sessions relating to either Asian or European culture in local primary schools. The Community Projects module allows you to work on local projects by contributing the knowledge you are learning from your courses to solve real business issues, including creating business plans, marketing surveys, store development and business opportunities.

Similarly, if you a student in the School of Computer Science they are offering a module which will give you a taste of what it’s like to be an IT consultant. The projects will involve you providing technology solutions to help improve a local charity’s performance, whether you’re improving existing systems or piloting new and innovative approaches.

English Language Support for Primary Parents, supported by graduate employer Experian, is another great example of a community engagement in action as part of the Award. It provides you with an opportunity to put into practice knowledge and skills already acquired in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language. You will be placed within a local Primary School to provide language teaching to non-native speaker parents seeking to improve their general English language proficiency. Due to popularity this module is already full for this academic year but is likely to run again next year.

For more information about any of the above modules please visit our Workspace site.

For general information about the Nottingham Advantage Award, click here.

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