Learning & Teaching

Students often tell us that they value opportunities to develop skills but can find it difficult to recognise where this is happening within their learning. Feedback from our students tells us that they would like:  

• to better understand how what they are learning connects to their future  

• greater emphasis on skills development during learning  

• more opportunities to reflect and build their self-awareness.  

The Surface stage builds on the work of Identify by making employability and transferable skills more visible within the curriculum. By explicitly referencing where, how and why students acquire and develop both disciplinary and transferable skills, you can help students better understand the value of their learning and their own development. 

Without this, students can find it difficult to translate what they learn within their course into meaningful examples that they can apply to future study, opportunities and experiences. 

Surface also provides an important bridge between Identify and Enhance. Once students can recognise and understand a skill, they are better prepared to actively develop it. 

Our approach 

Surface is about more than providing students with a checklist of skills. Students need opportunities to understand what a skill means within the context of your discipline, why it is important and what good development looks like in practice. They also need opportunities to recognise where they are already developing that skill and identify how they can continue to strengthen it. 

Working with your College Employability & Skills Lead, you'll explore practical ways to make employability and transferable skills more explicit through course documentation, learning activities and reflective opportunities. The focus is on creating a coherent and connected student experience where skills are revisited throughout the course, rather than appearing at isolated points. 

What do you need to do? 
Using the transferable skills identified during the Identify stage, you'll select at least one skill and make it explicit throughout your course. This may include highlighting skills within course documentation, referencing them during teaching activities, discussing why they are important within the discipline and supporting students to recognise opportunities for development. The aim is to ensure that students can identify the skills they are developing, understand their relevance and begin reflecting on their own progress. 

What resources and support are provided at this stage? 

• Guides on how you can effectively surface skills to students within your course and Case Studies demonstrating good practice 

• Consultation and support from your College Employability & Skills Lead