Surrey’s ‘Life-wide Learning’ initiative

The University of Surrey is committed to the idea of a more complete education and it is creating a new Surrey Award to encourage students to make their own educational experience more complete while at University. The Award will recognise and value students’ commitment to learning from all aspects of their lives, eg. through part-time work, giving service to the community, starting and running a business and many other activities.

‘Learning Through Part-time Work’ certificate

As part of Surrey’s life-wide learning initiative, we are developing a ‘Learning Through Part-Time Work’ certificate.  The involvement of local businesses will be a key element.  The certificate aims to help students who are working part-time to recognize that they are learning important things through this experience. The process it supports encourages students to be more aware and to record and self-analyse their experiences in order to reveal their learning and personal development. Experience gained during part-time work is often underestimated in terms of its personal development potential. Many part-time workers focus on the cash benefits without considering the day to day interactions and exchanges that contribute to personal development. The purpose of this Certificate is to help students develop their self-awareness about what they have learnt and gain recognition for this learning so that they gain more benefit from their work experiences.

‘Apprentice’ styled challenge

We want to work with local businesses to create new sorts of experiences that will benefit students and the company.  Currently we are looking for up to four businesses willing to help us develop an ‘Apprentice’ styled challenging experience based on a real business problem.  The company would provide a challenge based on a real business problem.  Students would be invited to join a team to spend a week working on this problem. (We anticipate that for each challenge we will have 4 – 5 teams.)  A representative from the business would brief the teams who would each develop a potential solution and pitch this to the representative one week later. A modest prize would be given by SCEPTrE for the solution judged by the representative to be the best.

Would you like to be involved in developing this idea and offer a challenge? Email: c.dowding@surrey.ac.uk

University work-related projects

The University of Surrey encourages the development of modules within degree courses that are related to the world of work, encouraging the students to develop professional skills during their university course.

In 2009 we want to encourage adaptation of, and innovation in, the curriculum around the ideas of ‘work integrated’ and ‘experiential’ learning.

Business-people would be invaluable partners in this endeavour.

Would you be interested in participating in work-based projects? Email c.dowding@surrey.ac.uk

Some examples of current enquiry-based projects:

• Each year an ‘Enterprise Academy’ is formed, during which students are encouraged to share their experience and understanding of what “being enterprising” means, while developing some useful creative-thinking skills.  In small groups, students use these skills to imagine and plan two forms of enterprise per group – one profit making and one with a social action remit.  We are actively looking for businesses who would like to work with the student teams.

• The transistor is at the heart of virtually every modern day electronic device from the laptop computer to the mobile phone. The Electronic Engineering Department has a project that introduces an enquiry-based learning approach into transistor operation and design.  They will learn both as individuals and as part of a team how their choice of design controls performance.

• The Management School is developing a short intensive work experience/professional practice module for postgraduate students in the Management School. This will offer the opportunity for most postgraduate students, irrespective of background, to gain some experience of the professional workplace.

• The Political Studies department has developed modules based around negotiations, which allow them to understand the pressures and constraints that such negotiations impose on reaching an agreement.

• In the Department of Engineering a project is raising the profile of collaborative enquiry-based learning while engaging students in the process of learning the foundations of Digital Signal Processing.  In addition, it attempts to steer the existing student culture towards enquiry, self-learning and peer learning.

• The Electronic Engineering Department has a project that replaces traditional scripted laboratory and professional skills workshops with student-led enquiry-based learning processes.  It is anticipated that the development of professional skills for design work, feeding into a revised laboratory programme, should lead to enhanced independence and confidence associated with problem solving and laboratory work.

• The English Department has a project to develop and support students as creative thinkers and independent enquirers.