2017/18 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

BIOL1223 Career and Professional Development for Life Scientists

10 creditsClass Size: 57

Module manager: Dr Stephanie McBurney
Email: s.j.mcburney@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2017/18

Pre-requisite qualifications

Successful completion of A Levels or equivalent and acceptance on to Degree programme

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Module summary

This module will help students with their next career steps by introducing them to the careers available to bioscience graduates, the skills employers are looking for and how to achieve them. It will provide students with a competitive edge in the employment market by helping them to develop the necessary skills to seek and compete for work experience, internships and graduate employment. Comments from students who completed the module include….“The opportunity to reflect on personal qualities and employability is invaluable. It has helped me realise what I need to do”“It was really useful. I definitely feel more prepared for job applications”“I would recommend it very highly. It’s made me think early what I want to do”The module will provide advice on when and how to start looking for work or work experience plus making applications and succeeding at interviews for work from a basic level. The module will take students on a journey, starting with the need for career and life planning, to exploring what an ideal graduate is and exactly what employers expect of today’s graduates, through to the career choices, routes and opportunities currently open to graduates and bioscientists in particular. During the module students will learn about and develop the range of skills (teamworking, networking, seeking opportunities, presentation skills) needed to successfully secure and succeed in the world of work. They will also learn how to evidence these skills. Students will learn about the importance of building up personal and employability skills in addition to bioscience-related qualifications and knowledge. Students will also learn how to applications and be interviewed for their job/career of choice to help them towards successfully progressing into the world of work. Students will learn about securing work/work experience via networking and ‘the hidden jobs market’ too. Whatever their future work experience or career plans this module aims to help students move forward into their first work experience and/or graduate job/role.

Objectives

The objective of the module is to help undergraduate students to reflect on their future career/life plans and to prepare for work and/or work experience, plus to learn and develop the key skills that are expected by graduate employers in today’s world of work – be that work in academic or other research and development laboratories, in a business environment or in the field.

Learning outcomes
On completion of the module students will be able to:
- Devise and maintain a career/life plan;
- Research their own career interests, values and motivations;
- Understand what is meant by the term an ideal graduate and know who employs bioscientists after graduation;
- Describe the key skills that employers look for in new graduate recruits;
- Identify their own current employability skills strengths and weaknesses;
- Identify opportunities to develop their employability skills during their time at Leeds;
- Identify common team roles and how they themselves fit best within a team;
- Write and maintain a curriculum vitae and personal statement;
- Complete a job application form (on paper or online);
- Deliver a good oral presentation;
- Demonstrate commercial awareness of a bioscience related sector/company;
- Learn how to network effectively in person and online.

Skills outcomes
Students will:
- Learn how to plan their next career/life steps and to reflect and build on their plans.

- Recognise the value of self-reflection in career/life planning (e.g. students will be able to reflect on their own interests, values and motivations) and learn to feed-their reflections forward to influence their own career/life plans.

- Learn about the employability skills and professionalism that are required in today’s workplace.

- During their own time, learn how to self-assess and rank their own employability skills strengths and weaknesses.

- During their own time, identify and engage with curricular and extra-curricular activities that will help them to develop the bioscience and employability skills that today’s employers require.

- Learn about teams and team-working and identify how they might fit and work best within a team/project group.

- Learn how to positively present themselves to others in writing (e.g. via a CV, personal statement or online job application) and in person, via networking, a more formal interview/assessment centre or presentation

- Learn about the hidden jobs market and how to network and positively communicate their skills and career plans to others, in person and in writing and practice working effectively in a team.

- Learn to work alone to gather information related to their future career plans from a range of literature and online sources.

Syllabus

- Lecture/workshop (1 hour): Career/life planning: what are your next steps - what is an ideal graduate, what careers are open to graduates and bioscientists in particular, what factors can influence your career/life plans e.g.: degree, interests, values, motivations and skills.
- Lecture/workshop (1 hour): Who might employ you and how, when and where to make contact with potential employers?
- Workshop (2 hours): The skills that employers want in new graduate-level recruits
- Workshop (2 hours): Team-working roles and skills (students to complete a team-working test e.g. The Belbin Test, or an equivalent, before this session)
- Workshop (2 hours): The job application process
- Workshop (2 hours): The job interview process
- Workshop (2 hours): Effective networking
- Workshop (2 hours): The value of work experience
- Workshop (2 hours): The work experience search
- Workshop (2 hours): Preparing for work experience, politics, fitting in, asking for help/information
- Seminar (2 hours): Feedback/question and answer session

(20 hours in total)

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	10	2.00	20.00
Independent online learning hours			18.00
Private study hours			62.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			100.00

Private study

20 hours: Students will be expected to spend 1 hour following each lecture/workshop completing the relevant sections of a career development workbook/flow chart.
18 hours independent online learning: Students will be expected to complete online: self-awareness tests, a teamworking-related test e.g. the Belbin test and CV and online job application form; they will also be expected to use the University websites, including LeedsforLife, skills@thelibrary and Leeds University Union websites to help with identifying opportunities for their own employability skills development.
42 hours: Students will be expected to:
a. Visit the University Careers Centre and learn about its website and other resources that could help them with their future work experience/career/life plans e.g. learn from guidance materials re. CV writing, interview skills and how to prepare for assessment centres.
b. Research potential employers online, on paper and in person via careers or networking events or fairs and via their own personal networks too
c Explore who might offer them work experience (shadowing, an internship or placement) or an actual job in the future
d. Develop targeted job applications and prepare fully for course related presentations, interviews, assessment centres and networking opportunities.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Student attendance at lectures will be monitored in line with standard faculty practice.

To ensure satisfactory progress throughout the module: Students progress/performance on formative and summative tasks will be monitored by academics during and after each workshop session and any struggling students identified so that additional advice/support can be provided where necessary:
1. Formative tasks and worksheets will be devised for each of the workshops and students will be provided with immediate constructive feedback on their performance either by their peers and/or the group academics/facilitators.
2. Post-workshop online quiz scores will be monitored by academics. Students will receive immediate online feedback based on their responses to the quizzes. However, struggling students will be identified from their poor scores and provided with additional feedback/advice where necessary.
3. Start and end of module improvements in CV writing, LinkedIn profile completion, interview and presentation techniques will be monitored by peers and academics.
4. Students will be required to spend time monitoring/reflecting on their own progress each week by completing a careers direction workbook based on workshop content, online revision and private reading sessions. The workbooks will also be monitored by academics firstly in week 3. At the end of the module. General feedback will be provided too.
5. Students will be encouraged to seek help outside of the module too and perhaps to sign up to the alumni and development mentoring scheme so that they can ask for help from people perhaps already working in a role in which they are interested in getting moving towards.

Module manager and lecturers will be notified of students failing any formative or summative tasks/assessments, so that additional support can be provided. Conditional release of support material, based on completion of each week's post-workshop online test or workbook worksheet, will ensure student involvement.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Oral Presentation	Group presentation; individuals to work in groups of 4 and all to contribute equally to the final presentation	35.00
Reflective log	Students to reflect on their own career/life plans via completion of a flow chart or career direction/skills development workbook	25.00
Online Assessment	Online job application (to include completed CV and personal statement)	40.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Assessment of this module is on a continuous basis. All pieces of coursework should be considered as compulsory and the marks from each summative assessment contribute to your overall module mark as shown above. Please note there will be no resit opportunity for this module during the August resit period, owing to the continuous nature of the assessment. Any student who fails this module due to failing assignments 2 and/or 3 due to non-attendance and needs it for progression/credits will be required to repeat the module as an internal candidate the following year, repeating all classes and assignments, for a maximum mark of 40% (in line with other university resits).

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 21/09/2017

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