What’s going on?! What is to come?! An update from Charlotte….
Hello everyone,
What a busy few weeks it has been! I have been spending a lot of time researching the ways that other UK universities give value to students’ extra-curricular activities through accreditation, certification, or competition. In fact, just today I had an extremely helpful conversation with the University of Nottingham about their Advantage Award – it is wonderful to see so many institutions willing to share their expertise with us. All of the information I am collating is going towards the creation of a reflective tool for Humanities students here at Southampton, so that they can get the most out of their university experiences by understanding how they are developing not just academically, but also personally and professionally.
More locally, I have been learning all about the Group Activity going on across the University of Southampton through meetings with colleagues in Engineering and Electronics and Computer Science, and I have a meeting this week with a colleague in the Management School. In addition, I have met with a few of my fellow interns from the Southampton Opportunity Project to discuss how current activities in both Social Sciences and the nationally-linked social enterprise society Enactus can help Humanities students to develop their transferable skills.
I promised in my last post that I would tell you what the Southampton Opportunity Project is! Well, it is a university-run initiative which aims to:
- gain a better institutional insight of the opportunities already on offer to students within, alongside, and outside the curriculum;
- enhance the provision of opportunities that we know make a fundamental difference to student learning and development;
- encourage greater levels of student engagement with the opportunities we offer, and;
- enhance the Southampton support network that facilitates student learning and development.
The entire Mission Employable team are contributing to this project, and it has been immensely rewarding so far! The ultimate aim is the launch of a website that will act as a database for all the University’s opportunities. The website will allow students to search for opportunities by interest, academic discipline, year of study, and several other optional filters.
In other news: I am becoming digitally proficient! On our Southampton Opportunity Away Day at the Winchester School of Art, our social media oracle Fiona Harvey introduced us to all the different ways we can use social media to improve our professional lives and productivity. As a result, I am now collating a lot of my Group Activity research through Scoop.it, so that I can share as many of my findings as possible with you! You can find my topic ‘Higher Education Group Activity’ here http://www.scoop.it/t/higher-education-group-activity, and my ‘Higher Education Employability’ one here http://www.scoop.it/t/higher-education-employability-by-charlotte-medland. I hope you find them useful!
In my next post I’ll tell you more about the Mission Employable Working Group that I’m developing as part of my work with the rest of the team, but for now get in touch via Twitter or email me (C.J.Medland@soton.ac.uk) if you wish to know more!
Bye for now,
Charlotte