In today’s rapidly changing world, it’s more important than ever for students to develop the professional skills and knowledge that they will need in the workplace. Embedding employability and entrepreneurship is now a key focus of higher education and an active blended learning approach can facilitate this.
In a previous role, I supported a business lecturer to make their human resources module more industry focussed by bringing in a guest lecturer from industry to demonstrate how knowledge and skills from the module could be applied in practice. I also ran a seminar based around live graduate job descriptions which students had to complete mock applications for, developing their career thinking and insights into the employment market. This task also made use of peer feedback, with students discussing and reviewing potential application answers together to foster a sense of shared learning.
Despite my confidence in this approach, my sessions were poorly attended. I decided to ask the students who did attend to be open and honest with me about why. Although some students enjoyed it, others told me that the seminar was boring. The reason? The students were focussed on running their own businesses and wanted opportunities to develop practical entrepreneurial skills. They didn’t want to hear about working or reflect on their knowledge. Instead they wanted opportunities to ‘do’, for example by writing job descriptions and policies.
Asking for feedback, rather than ignoring the half empty seminar room, gave me the opportunity to critically reflect on my pedagogical approach. It also gave me an insight into why the students were studying the course and their aims and ambitions. Whilst traditional academic reading and case studies remain a crucial element of teaching, I believe a stronger active blended learning approach could improve the students experience and provide them with the skills they need.
My mock application task could be developed from a discussion-based activity to one where students role play an interview scenario. The students more interested in entrepreneurship could act as the HR team and the students interested in applying for graduate roles could act as the candidates. After the role play, both groups could provide constructive feedback. A class discussion could focus on good interviewer practices and candidate scoring criteria.
To develop further entrepreneurial skills my guest speaker could present a live project brief, for example, a policy challenge from their company around hybrid working. Students could work in groups, both face to face and asynchronously, to develop draft a policy using collaborative online tools. They could then present this to the guest speaker and compare it to the real world policy used by their company. A discussion about the importance of good HR policy could then take place.
Both these activities require the students to be active participants and to apply their knowledge to real world situations. The tasks are also collaborative and flexible, allowing students the flexibility to learn in a way that matters most to them. The tasks remain rooted in theory but practical in application.
By making use of active blended learning and critically reflecting on our teaching practices, we can both improve student experience and prepare students for success in the workplace. There are some fantastic examples of employability related active blended learning across various disciplines in Advance HE’s employability compendiums which can all be accessed here