A guest post by Andy Fisher (University of Nottingham, UK)
If you think that it is valuable and worthwhile to teach employability skills to undergraduate philosophy students – and you want to do it! - what should you do? This was the question that we set ourselves in the Nottingham Philosophy Department in 2016. The answer has led to a popular, unique module: Communicating Philosophy, which brings in professionals from outside the academy to train undergraduates how to communicate their ideas to non-academic audiences.
Developing the module
We knew that large numbers of students only really engaged with content that is assessed. This meant that when we put on employability workshops, students generally didn’t turn up. The difficulty was in working out how to put an employability module within the assessed programme of a philosophy degree – it is, after all, a philosophy degree! The answer was deceptively simple: teach them how to communicate new philosophical ideas in such a way that gave them a set of useful employability skills.
I like to think of it as employability by stealth. Of course, in some sense we all do this anyway with all our philosophy modules. We can all list those skills that our students will find useful in their future career – critical thinking, time management, independence etc. However, we wanted to be much more strategic and focused, and with a genuinely practical component, too. Giving students transferable skills is one thing. Actually training them in how to transfer their knowledge, ideas, and understanding is quite another.
First, we consulted with the careers and employability team to find out what our philosophy students typically do after graduating. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turned out this included, but wasn’t limited to, law, teaching, working with charities/NGOs, further study, journalism, and marketing. Second, we found departmental alumni and friends of the department who were established and successful in those very fields, and were happy to help. Third we picked our skills and activities central to those areas. So, for law, preparing a legal brief; teaching, writing a lesson plan; charities/NGOs, developing a funding bid; further study, producing a postgraduate application; journalism, writing a press release; marketing, managing twitter/blogs/posters. We then put it all together.
Running the module
In the first two weeks we taught – using traditional lecture/seminar approach – two philosophy papers that they probably wouldn’t have read for any other module. We thought hard about what type of papers we wanted. We wanted to make sure that we created a level playing field for our students so we picked papers which they probably wouldn’t have studied in any other module. We also wanted to stay away from papers which required a very specific skill set which some students may have and some may struggle with – we stayed away from anything on paraconsistent logic for example! We felt that students might get a bit bored rereading the same paper again and again for seven weeks, and yet we wanted to get them to understand that re-reading and depth of understanding was very important. Hence we arrived at teaching two papers. The last time we ran the module we used a forthcoming paper on the philosophy of education about the nature of teaching, and Laurie Paul’s 2015 paper ‘What you can’t expect when you are expecting’. These seemed to us exciting and containing enough philosophical content and depth to repay revisiting.
A very usual feature of this module is that most of the teaching is given by people from outside the academy. Students love hearing a voice from the ‘real world’, and it helps break the down the perceived hurdle of moving from education into the world of work. Each week we asked our visiting speakers to talk about how to design a legal brief, lesson plan, funding bid etc. This was easy for them and took little preparation on their part; they were also, naturally, very relieved that they weren’t being asked to teach any philosophical content. If they were past philosophy students, we also asked them to talk to the students about the fact that you can actually get a job with a philosophy degree; and for all the speakers we asked them to have a short Q&A on what their chosen career is really like.
The glue that sticks the bits together is the assessment. Each week the students must communicate the key idea(s) from one of the two philosophy papers, via the medium that they had been taught for that week. So, for example, the students might receive the task: ‘In no more than 1000 words, write a press release about Laurie Paul’s (2015) paper’. This meant that the students were being assessed on both their philosophical understanding and how well they could communicate it using the forms or media that might be central to a potential career. The final thing regarding running the module is how we designed the seminars. The seminars were spaces in the student’s timetable to allow group work on the assessment for that week. The module convenor would turn up to each seminar and give individual feedback on the assessments that were being prepared for that week. This was the only time that students were allowed feedback on their assessments. We found that students really appreciated this in-seminar feedback and the chance to work with other students when preparing their assessment.
Reflecting on the module
Students typically love the module. They get to hear an authentic voice discussing employment in the real world. They see that the Department cares about them, even if they aren’t going onto be a philosophy postgraduate. They’re equipped with lots of new skills – we often receive emails from students thanking us because they were asked about lesson plans/legal brief/social media campaign etc in a job interview and they could give some real-life practical examples. In several cases, we can demonstrate a direct link between the module and the student successfully getting a job.
Granted, some students struggle on the module, and if you are planning to run a similar module, it’s worth starting the first lecture with a very clear statement of these potential problems. The first is the frequency of the assessment. After the first two weeks, there is a piece of assessment every week for seven weeks (in our department, most students do only one or two essays per module). Although the total amount of words they complete for assessments is comparable to other modules, it is the intensity which is often hard for some students to deal with; especially, those who aren’t as good at managing their time.
The second thing to flag is that although the overall mark distribution for the module is comparable to other modules, given that each assessment is different each week, students typically have a very wide range of marks. When they are getting 50% then 80%, then 60%, and so on, students can find this off putting. Furthermore, there isn’t much they can learn from the feedback each week. After all, being told that they used too many emoji’s in their social media campaign isn't going to help them much when creating their lesson plan. And, finally, for the module to run well, the students need to be prepared to work in groups. Often the students who do best are those who form study groups, who work together on their assessments both in and out of the seminar groups.
All this said, if you manage student's expectations, consult the careers and employability service, and properly brief the visiting speakers, then the students will love the module, and be better equipped to get a job.
Andy Fisher
For a much more detailed discussion of the module, including lesson plans, marking criteria, and assessments, you can read: Andrew Fisher and Jonathan Tallant, ‘Helping Philosophy Students Become (Even More) Employable', Teaching Philosophy39.4 (2016): 413-451, DOI: 10.5840/teachphil2016112357
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