Conference and seminar sessions in Employable skills
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Through Student Eyes: Graduate Attributes in the Economics and Finance Curriculum
Presentation at Birmingham Economics Education Seminars (BEES),Integrating Skills for Employability into the Economics Curriculum
Presentation at SWEETS Workshop 2024: Economics Education Landscape in the UK,Talking your way through employability: evaluative conversations to develop confidence and critical thinking in Economics
Presentation at DEE 2019,This presentation outlines the findings from the evaluation of an innovative assessment design aimed at developing students’ confidence and critical thinking, as well as communication and debating skills, in a History of Economic Thought (HET) module running at the School of Economics of the University of East Anglia. The assessment structure of the HET module consists of three pieces of summative assessment: (i) a group video-presentation, (ii) a critical essay, and (iii) an evaluative conversation (akin to a viva voce). Whilst the group submission constitutes a stand-alone component of assessment, the critical essay and evaluative conversation assessments are inter-linked. The evaluative conversation is designed to enable students to demonstrate how they have acted upon the feedback received on their critical essay. Our design generates well-structured feed-forward dynamics as students’ engagement with the feedback received on their essay assignment directly affects their performance in the final evaluative conversation. Preliminary results highlight that students find the task helpful at developing new skills, as they recognise the usefulness of evaluative conversation. Our analysis also allows us to differentiate students’ appraisal of this novel assessment by performance and by orientation towards feedback. We argue that evaluative conversations should be more widely embedded in curriculum and assessment design as an effective means to enhance employability skills of Economics graduates.
Special Session: Employability Skills in UK Economics Degrees?
Presentation at DEE 2019,Embedding Social Capital in the Economics Curriculum
Presentation at DEE 2017,The paper reports on the students' experience as business/financial consultants for qNomics. qNomics is a pro-bono organisation set up within the School of Economics and Finance at Queen Mary University of London. qNomics provides financial guidance and resources to technology start-ups and entrepreneurs. Clients come to qNomics for advice on a range of issues including market strategy, business planning, accounting, funding, and regulatory compliance. Students have the opportunity to counsel clients on issues and guide clients through the various challenges that they face, particularly at the early stage of their business development. Under the supervision of practitioners from professional service companies, students develop research and communication skills and have the opportunity of applying their knowledge of economics and finance to the actual needs of young businesses. Through interviews with the participating students, the paper provides an account of the students' own perceived experience by investigating students’ expectations and actual experience. A particular focus is placed on the skills that students perceive having developed as well as the more general development of social capital. An understanding of whether the scheme provides a transformational experience for the students is also attempted.
