Developing Professional Skills

Author: jlj366

Created: 2011-10-31 04:52pm

Edited: 2011-11-29 03:57pm

Keywords: generic skills development, cooperative learning groups, professional skills, collaboration, team work, peer assessment, self assessment

Description:

This design encourages students to engage in a team based, authentic project to develop skills specific to their future professional practice. The main aim is to provide students with meaningful learning experiences that promote generic skills relevant to their industry and develop their team-work skills. Student teams develop a product for a client as well as the required documentation (e.g. project proposal, design specifications, legal documentation etc.) which are all based on industry standards.

Developing Professional Skills gives students a real-world experience in working within the requirements and standards in the professional setting for which they are preparing. Students collaborate with each other to complete a project as they would in the workforce. Peer and self-assessment allows students to develop skills in monitoring their own and judging quality of their co-workers project input and output.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

to develop generic skills for relevant professional practice such as communication, research and time management skills
to develop task management skills within a team environment
to engage in effective collaboration and negotiation skills
to develop specific knowledge and skills of particular industry practices

Resources		Tasks		Supports
Role descriptions Previous contract samples Individual and team contract templates Team management checklist	→	Negotiate: Teams negotiate roles and responsibilities ↓
Industry related standards Client briefs/project descriptions Previous work samples Template for preparing project specifications	→	Select & Plan: Teams select project and write specifications/plan ↓
Peer assessment template Self-assessment template		Develop & Evaluate: Teams work on project. Students conduct peer and self assessment ↓	←	Tutor led assessment sessions
Hints and tips for presenting		Present: Teams present project

Additional information

Generic skills can be run as a project parallel to lectures and tutorials to promote the development of knowledge and skills. This activity is generally conducted with final year students to allow them to consolidate learning from the previous semesters. This design could be customised to incorporate a real client, or a problem set by the teacher. The teacher could choose to define the role rather then allowing student choice and negotiation.

This design can be run in a face-to-face or online environment in most industry and professionally based discipline areas. Prior to implementation, ensure that the online environment (if one is being used) is available, and set up in a way so that it is ready for students to commence the project. i.e. activity descriptions, resources and supports should be uploaded, and discussion forums and or/chat facilities made available. Regardless of environment, the teams should be established prior to implementation, or a system in place to allow students to form teams.

Assessable items may include:
• project specification and plan
• the final project
• individual project input (as determined from peer and self assessment)

Original designer –
Luca, J. (2002). Description of Supporting Generic Skill Development with Online Technology. Retrieved September 29, 2009, from Learning Designs Web site: http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/exemplars/info/LD16/index.html