October 18, 2012, by Teaching at Nottingham

Employability skills in Politics teaching

Dr Lucy Sargisson: “We identified a need to update the curriculum to meet changing demands and to increase relevance in the School of Politics and International Relations. We want to offer a curriculum that supports students’ transition to becoming independent learners and also enhances staff skills, knowledge and expertise with regard to their teaching.

“The main goal is to embed employability skills into modules to raise the awareness of both staff and students of the skill components and to provide opportunities for the students to apply skills via placements, work experience and internships which would encourage them to link skills sets with actual work experience.

“To achieve these aims we surveyed colleagues in the School of Politics and International Relations and interviewed individual members of staff. This in itself helped to increase staff awareness of the employability skills available within our teaching. All the module documentation in the School was reviewed and improved module handbooks have been being produced for the 2012/2013 academic session. These now show the employability skills opportunities available within each module and the relationship these skills have with different careers.

“Research has also established that few Russell Group universities offer internships and the decision was made that the lack of resources would prevent such a development. Work experience opportunities, however, could be developed and the School is offering a workplace based Nottingham Advantage Award module in 2012/13. We hope to develop this into a credit bearing module (with research and employability skills) the following year.”

Dr Lucy Sargisson
School of Politics and International Relations

This work was funded in part by the University’s Teaching and Learning Development Fund. Lucy’s project was titled “Employability Skills and Internships in Politics Curricula.”

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn