Helping students think and adapt their way into work
Professor of Molecular Virology, Alison Sinclair, recently gave a presentation at a Higher Education Academy (HEA) conference outlining some of the steps she has taken to embed employability skills in her teaching.
Her goal was to help students to develop increased confidence in their abilities to think and adapt and by doing this to enhance their chances of gaining a job on leaving university.
Professor Sinclair said: “The ability to apply prior knowledge to different situations is a skill that is highly valued by employers but the confidence to do this does not come naturally to some students. This will negatively impact on them in employment interviews and when faced with a new task in their first job.
“During the early days of their research career, many current scientists faced a sink-or-swim situation when confronted with a new problem. Although this trial-by-fire is effective at identifying those scientists most capable of making the transition independently, some talented scientists will fall by the wayside simply because they lack confidence in their abilities to adapt.”
Professor Sinclair - who last year was recognised as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy - developed tasks which tested students’ ability to recall prior knowledge and skills, adapt them to a different experimental situation and then apply them in the laboratory.
This ‘Recall, Adapt, Apply’ approach was trialled in a series of practicals undertaken by second year BSc Biomedical Science students during 2012-15.
Students were asked to perform on-the-spot calculations, analyse and present complex data and produce hand-drawn figures illustrating the principle of the method to be drawn during the session.
“It worked,” said Professor Sinclair. “An evaluation of the marks obtained for relevant questions during the end-of-year exam were compared with the average for the module and were all higher.
“It takes more work on the part of the teacher and more work on the part of the students so you may not find it to be immediately popular.
“Showing students how their ability increases and how their confidence grows should help to sell the value of the ‘Recall, Adapt, Apply’ approach to them as well as boosting their confidence in their own abilities.”
Read Professor Sinclair’s blog about ‘Recall, Adapt, Apply’.