Dr Lorna Warnock (Biology) and Dr Amanda Barnes (Biology) delivered the first Forum workshop of the academic year. Their workshop focused on an HEA funded toolkit they have developed in collaboration with Dr Hillary Jones (University of Sheffield) to help students articulate the professional competencies they will develop through their programme of study.

• Slides: Student Competencies Toolkit Forum Workshop [PDF]

Their workshop highlighted the importance for students to understand how they can best present themselves and the skills they have developed to future employers. The framework, which can be developed by academic staff, identifies the core competency developed for each programme. Academics can provide examples of how the core competencies will be achieved, which can then help students to see how they can articulate these skills to future employers.

What was really useful about this workshop was the chance to design our own framework for our own programmes – which stimulated some interesting discussions on the different types of competencies required for different programmes. It was stressed that the competency framework should be updated every two years to ensure that it is still relevant to the programme and also employer’s expectations.

We saw, through supporting videos how useful this approach was to support students, and how we could use this tool to stimulate workshops or personal tutorial sessions with students to help them focus on the skills that they have developed and those that need more development.

To find out more about their framework see:

• The Mysterious Language of Competencies: Helping your students to understand and articulate their professional competencies

Summary by Maddy Mossman