Keywords:
Career Readiness, Reflective Learning, Instruction
Presented by:
Lynn Meade, University of Arkansas
Key Statement:
Students struggle to understand how college courses connect to career readiness. We can help.
Abstract:
I handed a roomful of Juniors a paper of career readiness competencies and asked them to write in examples from college where they developed that competency. Most students struggled to think of even two. Half of those students said they learned the skill from their extracurricular work. Research on explicit and implicit communication will frame this talk about why students don’t know that courses our teaching them valuable skills and what we can do to help. I will share five strategies to help your students make the connections between your college classes and career readiness.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Explain the disconnect between students' perceptions of career readiness skills gained in college courses and the actual skills developed through their coursework.
2. Identify at least three strategies to help students make clearer connections between course content/activities and the development of career readiness skills.
3. Construct a plan to help students make connections between course objectives and career competencies.
Hear it from the author:
TRANSCRIPT:
Career competencies. They don't get it, and we have to help them understand my name is Lynn Meade and at the University of Arkansas. When I ask a group of my students. In what ways had they learned about? Career and self. Development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, teamwork and technology in their classes. They were stumped. They couldn't think of how they had learned about any of these important career readiness skills. At that point, I realized it's important that this faculty helps them to make the connections between these valuable skills that employers are looking for and the things that they're doing in classes. I had some suggestions of things that we can do. We can talk about it in our syllabus. We can talk about it during syllabus week. Anytime we have an assessment that qualifies for one of these, we should tell them we should write it. We should make it part of the activity. When we're doing in class activities, we should be able to talk about these sorts of things, continually answering. So what? Who cares? And then, of course, giving students an opportunity to reflect. I would love to talk to you about these particular things.
References
Finley, A. (2023). The career ready graduate: What employers say about the difference college makes. Association of American Colleges and Universities.
Hora, M. T. (2023, January). Career-readiness initiatives are missing the mark. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/01/09/career-readiness-initiatives-are-missing-mark-opinion
National Association of Colleges and Employers. (n.d.). Career readiness: Competencies for a career-ready workforce. https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/
Schwarb, A. W. (n.d.). 5 ways to integrate career connections into the college experience. Strada Education Network. https://stradaeducation.org/report/5-ways-to-integrate-career-connections-into-the-college-experience/