Session Descriptions

Session Descriptions

Keynote- Building the UK evidence-base for careers work: new constructs for teaching and learning.

Deirdre will outline new legislative policy developments related to careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG) and reflect upon the current evidence-base for careers work in order to consider ways in which this can be further developed.

Destinations® Evolutions

Careers services are changing and adapting Destinations® to suit their local needs. The presentation will look at interesting examples of how services are using Destinations® with individual clients, for careers education and how the site is helping to build bridges to academic departments. Users are developing exciting new content and collaborating to share expertise. These and other recent developments will be described. The benefits and challenges of incorporating Destinations® into a careers service's offer will be discussed in the context of the lessons learnt from pilot activities at the University of Reading and other CCMS partners across England and Ireland.

Destinations®: integration into a careers website and use as a 1-1 guidance tool

Limited curriculum based Careers Management Skills development at Roehampton has led us to developing Destinations® in other, innovative ways. This has mainly involved focusing on using it as an individually accessed self help tool. Destinations® has been integrated into our careers website as the main information resource, and this workshop will include a brief demonstration and a discussion on the challenges of doing this. In addition we have begun using Destinations® is as a tool to support 1-1 careers guidance.

Destinations®: The Irish Journey

The primary focus of the University of Limerick project has been to customise Destinations® to make it more relevant to Irish students and to reflect the Irish graduate employment environment. This task was undertaken by a multidisciplinary project team comprising careers professionals, placement officers, students, and academic faculty in two institutions. The presentation will describe how the team approach has been an effective exercise in sharing expertise and resources and in supporting the professional training and development of members. The collaborative nature of the project is also reflected in the commitment to share the outcome to the wider community of higher education careers services in Ireland.

Developing an advanced Blackboard site and using interactive tools

As part of our compulsory careers education module we have devised a generic blackboard (VLE) site to support the teaching of this module. This session will cover

· How and why we developed the site

· What we included on the site

· How we are evaluating the project

· Ways forward for the future

· A demonstration of the site

Destinations® and iLearn

This session will concern the role of Personal Development Planning (PDP) in relation to career planning and development and the steps taken to link the two together via iLearn (a Blackboard student area with eportfolio functionality designed to encourage greater engagement in PDP). The focus in particular will be on how the use of the Destinations® website beyond the Career Management Skills provision is currently being or could be promoted via iLearn, and whether students are using Destinations® for their own purposes. The session will end with some suggestions for future projects that could further promote the additional use of Destinations® by focusing on PDP and Employability as well as school-specific career development projects.

Destinations in the Curriculum and Across the University

This session will review how at Ulster Destinations® was customised to the Northern Ireland context and rebranded ‘UlsterGradNAV’. It will chart the progress of how it became the main online career development learning (CDL) resource at Ulster, supporting seven pathways of CDL delivery within the University. It will discuss the issues that have arisen in implementing CDL, as well as web integration with the University’s Portal, PDSystem, OPUS and WebCT. There will be an opportunity to view and discuss a number of lesson plans and accompanying PowerPoint’s, that have been developed specifically for non-expert use.

Careers Education in practice at Reading

Careers Management Skills (CMS) at the University of Reading is a compulsory five credit, assessed module for all students. Traditionally, the teaching has been challenging team given poor timetable slots, large class rooms, large student numbers and mixed levels of student engagement. As a result, we undertook some research on student engagement and modern teaching practices and have now incorporated these findings into our delivery. During the session we will focus on our findings, highlight best practice, feedback our evaluation results and discuss our ideas on further developments.

Adding value to Destinations with Course Genie and videos

Using Video Clips to reach the student body

One of the areas that the University of Birmingham have focused their attention on in the Destinations® Project has been the use of skills they develop through participation in work experience, voluntary work and extracurricular activities are international students. The project at Birmingham involved identifying a number of students who had been involved in activities alongside their studies to tell their experience. We believe this method of ‘telling their story’ is an effective way of both showing students how they can develop transferable skills and of encouraging them to do so.

The University of Bradford has a broad mix of students and we wanted the video clips within Destinations® to reflect the diversity of our students as well as our local employers. By “tailoring” Destinations® we hope that students will identify with the local nature of the content and be more receptive to the suggestions and advice contained within the site. The project at Bradford has produced a series of video clips of current students and local employers. These clips are being used extensively in careers’ module teaching and workshops but are also featured within the Bradford Destinations® website.

Using Destinations as a Key Resource in Careers Modules

The University of Bradford has been running careers modules for around twelve years and the project wanted to look at the ways that Destinations® could be used to support and develop our teaching. As well as the more obvious ways of using Destinations® within our teaching we wanted to explore ways that we can encourage students to “deep link” to the site for self-directed study. We developed and trialled a self directed study “unit” in Semester one 2008/9 using CourseGenie. Destinations® was a core component of this unit titled “Opportunities for Economists” and as a result we have both developed our team’s e-learning skills and are further developing our use of Course Genie.

Destinations®: integration into a careers website and use as a 1-1 guidance tool

Destinations®: The Irish Journey