Organising and Conducting an Effective Workshop

This guide provides some basic advice to help you plan and run an effective workshop with students.

Planning Checklist

Activity Who is responsible? Complete?Which students will I invite? E.g. student representatives, PGT students, final year students, non-finalist students

Find suitable time/s in students’ timetables for workshop Find time/s that are also suitable for facilitator/s. If possible have 2 facilitators, taking it in turns to present, be involved in discussions and take notes.

Arrange time slot for workshop (1 hour) Book suitable room Invite students Book refreshments if required If only one facilitator is available it may be useful to voice record the session to aid notetaking (if so, you must ask students permission). Free voice recording apps are available to download onto your device.

Send reminder email to students the day before the workshop

Facilitation TipsWelcome individuals to the room

Explain the purpose and process; give assurances about confidentiality

Seek agreement for recording; ensure your recording device is on

Use open-ended questions and avoid questions that require a 'Yes/No' answer in discussions

'What do you think about...' 'What benefits do you see associated with this...'

Use past experiences common to all participants

'Think back to your induction week...'

Encourage all individuals to participate in discussions and activities

'Does anyone have any other thoughts on this...' 'Has anyone had a different experience with this...'

Clarify meaning and understanding

'That's really interesting, could you explain a little more about what you just said...' 'Is this a recurring issue or was it just a single occurrence?'

Provide an opportunity at the end for participants to raise questions or issues

'Is there anything we haven't covered that you would like to mention?' 'Before we finish, is there anything you would like to add?'

Questions, guidance, and support: curriculumdev@bath.ac.uk

Curriculum TransformationDepartmental employability workshop – Process Sheet

This process sheet offers a framework to support engagement with students as part of Phase 1 of Curriculum Transformation.

Questions, guidance, and support: curriculumdev@bath.ac.uk

Questions, guidance, and support: curriculumdev@bath.ac.uk

Slide (Time) Activities

00:00 – 02:00

Introduction

1 (2 mins) Thank you for coming, we value your time and participation in this workshop.

We are looking to better understand how we can shape our curriculum offering at the University of Bath and gaining feedback and input from students is important to us.

As part of this workshop, there will be a number of activities that we want you to actively engage with and give us your honest opinions and ideas.

Your ideas and comments will be noted and fed back to Programme Development Teams, and will not be attributed to you personally.

02:00 – 10:00

What is employability?

2 (1 min) Introduce this section

This activity will introduce you to what the term “employability” actually represents, as well as show the importance of transferable skills in developing your employability

3 (1-2 mins) Discussion with students about what they understand of the term “employable”

4 (1 min) Show students a word cloud created from the responses to the question on slide 3 with a cohort of random students

5 (1-2 mins) Explain to students how the term “employability” can be split into two different sub-groups

6 (1 min) Discussion with students about what transferable skills they think they need for a job

7 (1 min) Show the list of the 87 most common transferable skills, and explain how these can be divided into 6 main categories

8 (1 min) Briefly discuss the importance of transferable skills, with emphasis being on employers valuing these skills a lot more now.

Also, mention the fact that we have the Bath Award here at our institution, which is a useful way of developing your transferable skills

00:10 – 00:25

“The Skills Gap”

9 (1 min) Introduce this section

This activity will highlight to students, as well as staff, that there can be a difference in the top transferable skills that students believe are more important to develop for a job, and the top transferable skills that graduate recruiters are looking for in their candidates.

10 (1 min) Students are asked to rank what they think the top 3 skills that graduate recruiters in their candidates, out of the top 10 produced by TARGET jobs

The top 3 skills must be chosen collectively by all students

11-20 (5 mins)

Go though each skill/definition, and ask students to decide if they think that the skill should be in the top 3

Students are only allowed to swap skills out, and are not allowed to change their minds in between each slide

Skills are listed in alphabetical order

21 (1 min) Recap on the top 3 skills that student have chosen

22 (2-3 mins)

Show the actual order of the skills according to TARGET jobs

Discussion with students over whether they are surprised by the order of importance, and how similar/different their top 3 skills are to the actual top 3.

23 (1 min) Explain what “the skills gap” and how this may relate to the decisions they made in the

Before the session, make sure that the supporting “Creating your own assessments” materials are printed out

Additional notes for the workshop can be found in the notes section of each slide in the PowerPoint

Questions, guidance, and support: curriculumdev@bath.ac.uk