All About Enterprising Graduates
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Pecha Kucha presentation from International Entrepreneurship Educators Conference 2017
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All About Enterprising Graduates
Editor's Notes
- Title/intro Good afternoon. I’m Gary Wood from the University of Sheffield. Today I want to share with you a piece of work that I’ve done to evaluate some enterprising modules I developed and ran in Sheffield. The work highlights some important considerations for embedded enterprise, but I also want to demonstrate the value of consulting graduates as a means of measuring our impact.
- 5 ECs/approach In Sheffield, we have developed a Five Capabilities Model of enterprise education. This draws together skills that are essential for enterprising graduates, and groups them into five capabilities. Our approach is to focus on capability, rather than skills, in recognition of the importance of students using and applying the skills in enterprising ways.
- Embedded enterprise strategy at TUoS We aim to embed these capabilities into degree programmes, so that students learn them fully contextualised within their own subject discipline. Our Enterprise Academy team works across the University to support academics to do this. Previously, I was a University Teacher in Linguistics, and that’s where I first created the modules evaluated here.
- The modules: All About Linguistics All About Linguistics was a first-year module to help new students appreciate the full diversity of linguistic study. After a series of tasters, the students’ assessment was to create a website to help A-Level students better understand what linguistic study offers. The website won an international Google award, and attracted 35,000 unique visitors per month.
- The modules: All About Syntax All About Syntax supported students’ transition out of their degree programmes. They created an online course, released via iTunes U, to help the public learn about sentence structure and see the real-world value of studying it. The module involved weekly project board meetings, chaired and minuted by different students each week.
- The Survey Students who took these modules have now graduated. This year I invited them to complete a short survey exploring whether and how the modules enabled them to develop 20 skills across the five enterprise capabilities. The survey also assessed the extent to which the students could have developed the capabilities through other modules and explored whether or not…
- …students felt that they had developed the skills and capabilities through extra-curricular provision. The graduates were also asked to evaluate the importance of each skill to their current job role, with a range from crucial – meaning they could not have got their job without the skill – through important, and useful sometimes, to not at all necessary.
- Participants The two modules ran between 2011-2014. 113 students took one or both modules and all of them have now graduated. I have contact details through email or social media for 108, and I invited them to complete the survey. Participation was voluntary, with a prize draw for £30 Amazon vouchers.
- Key findings (1) – return rates and importance of relationships/connections – Return rates figures 66% of the graduates I contacted completed the survey. Almost all had taken the All About Linguistics module, and 35% took All About Syntax. This response rate is much higher than we have achieved through other enterprise education research at the University and provides a rich and robust data set to explore our impact on graduate employability.
- – How – personal contact and social media from modules The key to success was sending personalised communications that came from me, so the graduates knew who was writing to them. I also used social media channels, including Twitter and Facebook, that we established within the modules. So there’s real value in using those channels beyond improving learning and communication within the modules themselves.
- Key findings (2) – Value of EE/Ent Ed A second key finding is that the majority of students rated the constituent skills of all five capabilities as crucial or important for their current job role. That is, they either couldn’t have secured, or couldn’t do their job without those skills. So, it’s important that we are developing those skills in our students to prepare them for life after their degree.
- – Academic nature of module and value to subject discipline One criticism I heard a lot in developing the modules is that they might not be sufficiently academic. But 100% of graduates said they learnt more about linguistics and 64% indicated that they were at least as academic as other units. 86% said the modules helped them better to see the relevance of studying linguistics.
- – 80% of students had opportunity to turn ideas into reality 80% of graduates said the modules allowed them to turn their ideas into reality. This is an important finding given the QAA definition of enterprise, because students were able to learn skills through using them in enterprising ways. For a subject that’s not inherently enterprising, this is an important success.
- Key findings (3) – Where/how to deliver enterprise education The third key finding is that there was wide disagreement between students on whether the modules had developed a few of the skills. That’s not surprising in an experiential learning process, since all students will have different experiences, but it underlines the need for cyclical embedding of skills development throughout degrees.
- – Need to ask if any other single module could have developed all the skills Although many students felt that they could have developed individual skills in other modules, I did not ask the question about whether any other single modules could have developed all the skills to the same extent. This is important since being enterprising requires a combination of skills, not those skills in isolation. Follow up work will explore this further.
- – Extra-curricular provision is important Finally, the survey touched on extra-curricular provision. Some skills, particularly those around risk-taking were reported as being developed more outside the curriculum, particularly through being part of student societies and volunteering. It is therefore important that we offer enterprise education both within and outside curricula.
- Impact – evaluation of method 1 So, what are the takeaway messages today? First, that maintaining connections with graduates, in simple ways like using social media groups, is very valuable if we want to obtain impact data. Second, the skills we are teaching are important in the workplace, but we need to ensure that experiential learning is cyclical, so all students can develop the skills.
- Impact – evaluation of method 2 Third, we must think holistically about enterprise education within universities. Embedding it into the curriculum cannot be the whole solution. Extra-curricular enterprise is clearly still important for some skills, particularly risk-taking and building networks – perhaps because the context makes taking risks lower stakes, and it’s more authentic for networking.
- Impact – evaluation of method 3 Finally, a very positive finding, for us as enterprise educators, is that making an entire module enterprising did not reduce academic rigour or the amount of subject learning students were able to achieve. In fact, it was positive because it helped students connect what they were learning to real-world contexts.
- Concluding remarks The dataset provides a rich picture of graduates’ perceptions of the value of their learning experience and the capabilities it enabled them to develop. I hope I’ve highlighted a few key findings and also a straightforward way for us to explore our impact through retaining positive connections with graduates as they leave our institutions. Thank you.