Undergraduate Perceptions of Course-based Assignments
In university courses, instructors are usually trying to teach students two things: course content and important skills. But researchers have noted that in most courses, there's a much greater emphasis on teaching students the content of the course than there is on teaching transferable, career-related skills. For example, in a course concerned with developmental psychology, the instructor is likely to spend much more time talking about how children change as they grow (the content of the course) than about how the course fosters things like critical thinking, communication or teamwork (the important skills). That doesn't mean that instructors don't think about skill development in their courses. They definitely do. When they design assignments and activities for the class, fostering transferable skills is usually uppermost in their minds.
So why don't course instructors spend much time explicitly talking about career-related skills?
Possibly, instructors assume that students will inherently understand the skills being developed through their assignments, and think that explicit discussion is unnecessary. But what if this assumption is faulty? If students don't "see" that fostering skills is an intended consequence of the assignment, then they may focus exclusively on how the assignment furthers their understanding of course content and miss skill development altogether.
Why is this a problem?
There are long-term consequences when students fail to recognize the skills that are being developed through their assignments. For example, students will likely be unable to see how the skills promoted through coursework provide a good complement to those that they have learned through their extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs, and volunteer work. This inability to see the big "skills picture" matters because job interviews don't focus on the student’s understanding of course content, but instead emphasize the skill set that the student is likely to bring to the organization. Students need to clearly understand how their learning experiences inside and outside the classroom connect to important transferable skills so that they can clearly communicate their abilities to a potential employer.
Our research
We have investigated the extent to which university students at all stages of the degree understand the transferable skills that are being developed through their course assignments. We have asked students to evaluate assignments in their major field of study and to tell us how relevant those assignments are in terms of their expected career path. We've also asked students to explain why they felt that the assignments were relevant or not, and to indicate what they believed the instructor's goals would have been in giving the assignment to their class. We found that, in general, students in our study failed to recognize the skills that might be developed through the assignments that they evaluated, and that this was true of senior university students as well as those in first year.
If you are interested in reading further about this project, please click on the file below.
So why don't course instructors spend much time explicitly talking about career-related skills?
Possibly, instructors assume that students will inherently understand the skills being developed through their assignments, and think that explicit discussion is unnecessary. But what if this assumption is faulty? If students don't "see" that fostering skills is an intended consequence of the assignment, then they may focus exclusively on how the assignment furthers their understanding of course content and miss skill development altogether.
Why is this a problem?
There are long-term consequences when students fail to recognize the skills that are being developed through their assignments. For example, students will likely be unable to see how the skills promoted through coursework provide a good complement to those that they have learned through their extra-curricular activities, part-time jobs, and volunteer work. This inability to see the big "skills picture" matters because job interviews don't focus on the student’s understanding of course content, but instead emphasize the skill set that the student is likely to bring to the organization. Students need to clearly understand how their learning experiences inside and outside the classroom connect to important transferable skills so that they can clearly communicate their abilities to a potential employer.
Our research
We have investigated the extent to which university students at all stages of the degree understand the transferable skills that are being developed through their course assignments. We have asked students to evaluate assignments in their major field of study and to tell us how relevant those assignments are in terms of their expected career path. We've also asked students to explain why they felt that the assignments were relevant or not, and to indicate what they believed the instructor's goals would have been in giving the assignment to their class. We found that, in general, students in our study failed to recognize the skills that might be developed through the assignments that they evaluated, and that this was true of senior university students as well as those in first year.
If you are interested in reading further about this project, please click on the file below.
| martini_rail_norton.pdf |
