Employability and transferable skills: Investigating work placements for Humanities Students

This project aims to enhance the employability of our graduates through an evaluative case study investigating subject-specific work placement and work experience opportunities in the local and regional community. The project will use a new work-facing module on ‘History and Heritage’ as a case study, although the aim of the project is to provide a sustainable model for a work-facing approach to teaching that can also be applied to other subjects. In the past, History as a course has offered no work placements or work experience either as part of the curriculum or as extra-curricular activities. Preliminary research has shown that students often organised work experience themselves, but struggled to make the necessary contacts, or were limited to generic non-subject specific work opportunities. Starting with the 2012/13 academic year, a new work-facing second year ‘Heritage and Public History’ (HIST271) module will contain a practical fieldwork based project examining the presentations of ‘History and Heritage’ in co-operation with local stakeholders. This module is part of the national and UoP commitment to enhancing graduate employability. Key module aims and outcomes include the development of a range of practical transferable and subject-specific skills with a strong reflective component. Preliminary research has shown that similar work-facing subject-specific initiatives in the Humanities (such as the Art History project ‘Young Explainers’) make a significant difference to undergraduate students by enhancing employability as well as creating confidence in their skills. The teaching fellowship therefore aims to facilitate the new History module by establishing links with local and regional partners for the work-facing project component of the module develop a sound model for a work-facing module, which will enable its eventual roll-out as a larger or compulsory module for all History second year undergraduates provide a model for a work-facing subject-specific module for other subjectsTFA