LT700-4-SP-CO:
Understanding Employability: Preparing for Your Future
2015/16
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Colchester Campus
Spring
Undergraduate: Level 4
Current
15
-
Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
BA W800 Creative Writing,
BA W801 Creative Writing (Including Year Abroad),
BA W401 Drama,
BA W402 Drama (Including Year Abroad),
BA QW24 Drama and Literature,
BA WQ42 Drama and Literature (Including Year Abroad),
BA QT37 English and United States Literature (Including Year Abroad),
BA T720 English and United States Literature,
BA Q300 English Literature,
BA Q320 English Literature (Including Foundation Year),
BA Q321 English Literature (Including Year Abroad),
BA PW38 Film and Creative Writing,
BA PWH8 Film and Creative Writing (Including Year Abroad),
BA P303 Film Studies (Including Year Abroad),
BA W620 Film Studies,
BA PQ32 Film Studies and Literature (Including Year Abroad),
BA QW26 Film Studies and Literature,
BA LQ32 Literature and Sociology,
BA QL23 Literature and Sociology (Including Year Abroad)
This module is designed to assist students in developing employability capabilities so they are better equipped to secure opportunities in the graduate labour market. Students will encounter fundamental concepts in career learning, will enhance their ability to seek opportunities and will reflect upon their own career journey and experience of work / volunteering. They will learn about employability from academic texts, popular culture, visiting speakers and their peers. The module will mix practical work and personal reflection with critical analysis of the research and evidence base.
The module will complement other modules that include study skills, personal development planning (PDP), professionalism and work related learning. It will also help prepare students for a placement year and be broadly relevant to a year abroad.
Level of module
Upon successful completion of the module students will be awarded 15 credits at NQF Level 4 (first year of under-graduate study). There are no pre-requisites in respect of prior knowledge or experience.
Aims
The aim of the module is to increase the likelihood that students will be able to secure their chosen careers. By interacting with a range of perspectives and concepts, as well as considering their own experience of work or volunteering, they will be able to reflect on and refine their own thinking about employability. They will develop narrative capital and a greater sense of agency and be better placed to relate their current self-identity to their possible future selves. The module will also enable them to understand the structure of the graduate labour market, to identify relevant opportunities and to practise the strategies needed to apply successfully for graduate level work or study.
No information available.
No information available.
Each lecture will introduce a number of fundamental employability concepts. These will be drawn from the field of career studies and related disciplines (e.g. sociology and social psychology and the Humanities). Students will be encouraged to draw on their home subject disciplines as part of an inter-disciplinary approach. Reflective and narrative learning will be used to capture personal and affective knowledge. Outside speakers (employers, alumni) will provide professional insight into the contemporary world of work. Online diagnostics will provide feedback to enable students to identify developmental priorities.
Schedule of study
The module begins by considering the ways that research can enrich and help personal development. The module then moves through three broad themes: the roots of career choice, identity and agency; the extent to which external factors in the labour market constrain and enable personal action and choice; issues and practices in the process of graduate recruitment. Lectures will emphasise interactive learning and peer discussion. Each lecture will be followed by further reading and short formative learning activities which will feed into a final summative assessed piece of work. Links to key web-based resources including media content will be placed on the Moodle site. Collaborative learning including virtual collaboration will also be used.
Teaching and learning methods
The module will be delivered by the Employability and Careers Centre, University of Essex; students will attend 20 hours of seminars and lectures over 10 weeks.
Learning outcomes
As a result of this module students should be able to:
- Critically reflect on how research and theory can enhance personal effectiveness (for employability and study)
- Compare and contrast different understandings of career success and articulate their own personal definition
- Apply theory to analyse critically their inherited career assumptions and values.
- Narrate the story of their emergent career identity in the context of their personal and academic development
- Appraise the key challenges and opportunities in the graduate labour market
- Research career opportunities using public information and personal networks
- Reflect on own experience of work / volunteering to inform career decision making
- Identify strategies for improving management of self and personal effectiveness in the work environment
- Demonstrate competence in key elements of the job selection process by expressing themselves appropriately in writing and through presentations
- Use a self-reflective approach to devising a developmental career action plan
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
| Coursework |
Career Research Project: Report or Presentation |
|
45% |
| Coursework |
Personal and Professional Development Portfolio |
|
50% |
| Practical |
Attendance and Participation |
|
5% |
Additional coursework information
Student work. All students will be expected to share in class discussions; undertake group learning activities (e.g. mini-research projects); share some of the results of their research; participate in mock assessment centre activities; undertake extra reading outside of the lectures and produce formative and summative pieces of assessed work. The module will create a safe space for students to share their personal thoughts and feelings about employability issues. However, their privacy and right to manage personal disclosure will be fully respected.
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Carol Faiers Sean Seeger, Lynne Jordan
hjstan (non Essex users should add @essex.ac.uk to create the full email address)
No
No
No
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
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