This portfolio is written by Earth Scientists for Earth Scientists from the experiences of Earth Scientists.
In recent years, the Government has funded initiatives to develop key skills to underpin career development in a world of ever-increasing technological development and change. In 1987 a DfEE programme, Enterprise in Higher Education, was launched to encourage higher education institutions (HEIs) to integrate formal training and assessment of key skills and career development into their degree courses. Substantial funding was allocated centrally to over sixty HEIs between 1989 and 1992 and distributed to successful internal bidders.
By virtue of the wide range of teaching and learning experiences that they have traditionally included, geoscience degree courses have proved over many years to be very effective vehicles for developing key skills implicitly. Our discipline was therefore well placed to win central funding in support of initiatives to develop key skills. The pioneering Earth Sciences Personal Development Programme at the University of Liverpool paved the way for similar initiatives within our community and, in 1996, a group of geoscientists was awarded a major DfEE contract under the Discipline Networks initiative to develop a discipline-based body that would bring together current best practice in personal and career development training within the geosciences. This portfolio is a major product of the two-year contract. It is a resource that the HE geoscience community can use to help students become responsible for their own personal and career development and to encourage self-managed, lifelong learning.
The UK Earth Sciences Personal & Career Development Network is a timely initiative that responds to the demands of a rapidly-changing graduate employment market and is very much in accord with Government plans for the future of HE as spelt out in the Dearing Report, Higher Education in the Learning Society. As the national professional body for geoscience, the Geological Society welcomes and supports the Network project and commends the portfolio to the geoscience community. The Society expects the use of these Network resources to contribute to the enhancement of quality of HE geoscience teaching programmes in the UK. It also expects that their use will feature in many of the geoscience degree courses that it accredits.
Professor Michael Brooks
Education & Training Officer
Geological Society
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London WC1 0JU
May 1998
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The "Network" is comprised of Earth Sciences academics having an interest in the development of teaching and learning within our subject area. Specifically, it is designed to encourage and facilitate the integration of personal & career development (P&CD) into the HE curriculum. This is achieved by:
Together, these activities help empower students to take responsibility for their own lifelong learning and career development.
The answer to this is basically, the whole of the HE Earth Sciences community!
Sructually, the Network comprises three Levels:
Level One: Core Partners (The Project Team)
The Project Team comprises six people from four Universities who were responsible for
securing the funding from the DfEE and managing the project. Each of the four academic
staff core partners have extensive experience of developing teaching and learning material
and integrating this material into the curriculum at their own universities and advising
colleagues at other universities in this activity.
The primary functions of Level 1 are to:
Level Two: Curriculum Managers (Teaching "Champions")
Each of the 49 universities that offer degree courses in Earth Sciences or Geosciences (encompassing Geology and Geophysics) has a level 2 contact. These are usually academics who have a direct interest in, and responsibility for, developing teaching and learning within their own departments. The major function of Level 2 is to design curriculum material for their own institutions, based on materials collated and disseminated from Level 1.
Level Three: Curriculum Providers (The Teachers)
Level Three comprises all undergraduate course teachers - those people who deliver the curriculum. In some ways, the crucial link in the Network is between Level 2 and 3 at each institution. If this link is healthy, the information disseminated by Level 1 will get through to the students. This is, of course, the prime objective of the Network.
The philosophy underlying the Network structure is one of collaboration. Good ideas are communicated to Level 1 from both inside and outside the discipline and then disseminated to all other Levels, giving all Earth Sciences academics an opportunity to tailor their own teaching and learning to include successful initiatives developed at other institutions and in other subject areas. This supportive environment is crucial to the success of the project and is welcomed by colleagues to whom explicit inclusion of P&CD in the curriculum is a relatively new and sometimes daunting prospect!!
The funding period for the project ends in March 1998 but, in many ways, this date marks the beginning of the Network's most important period. The structure is established and the ground work done but we need to keep the wheel turning. This is why the portfolio is such an important document. It will hopefully provide a focus for teaching and learning within our subject and will evolve as a document over time as lecturers develop more material and find different and innovative ways of delivering that material. The future role of the Network is therefore to:
*Members of Level One of the Network also form the core team for the sister project - Staff Development in the Earth Sciences, funded by HEFCE. This project highlights major T&L issues in our subject and runs training workshops designed to empower staff to incorporate these issues into the design and delivery of the curriculum. A number of the Staff Development workshop topics have been chosen as a result of the research arising from the Network project.
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Modern employers require graduates to have evidence (curriculum-based and extra curricula) of well developed key skills and are able to take control of their own career development. However, many Earth Sciences curriculum developers and teachers do not formally include such issues in their courses, and therefore, require a mechanism for integrating P&CD into their degree courses. Students need to have a focus for their P&CD that is subject specific and therefore relevant. The portfolio satisfies these requirements.
This portfolio concentrates mainly on providing exercises and case studies that can be used, by teachers of Earth Sciences at degree level, to develop the skills that empower students to prepare for employment and take control of their own personal and career development all within a subject specific framework.
It is intended to be a dynamic document which should evolve as curriculum developers and teachers become more comfortable and familiar with P&CD issues and their formal integration within Earth Sciences degree curricula.
Most of us actually do this on an informal basis but do we, and more importantly, do our students realise that we do it? The nature of our discipline - with fieldwork and laboratory work accomanying lectures and tutorials- provides a cocktail of learning environments which is ideally suited to developing and assessing key skills.
However, in many instances, we spend and unbalanced amount of time assessing the subject-specific skills at the almost total expense of the key skills. This is not to say that the key skills are more important - far from it - but the crucial thing to realise is that we can develop and assess these skills at the same time as we develop and assess subject-specific skills. This provides students with a balanced educational experience.
There are two ways in which to achieve this: by having separate modules concentrating on career planning, skills development, etc., or by integrating these elements into our standard curriculum activities. Individual course teams will decide which model they prefer but the portfolio will support both. Evidence suggests that total integration is the way forward but does, however, need careful planning and support mechanisms and this is where the portfolio and the Network can really help.
The portfolio can provide a base for curriculum material. With this type of document there is a requirement to set out exercises in a standard format. The style in which the portfolio is written will undoubtedly be unfamiliar and unsuitable to many people but the messages contained within the exercises are universal.
The portfolio is:
The portfolio is NOT:
Exercise Format
The instructions for the portfolio exercises are written for the benefit of the tutor and are followed by the student exercises. The basic format of the exercises is as follows:
From the Student Viewpoint
As already mentioned, the design of the portfolio allows the tutor to make the decisions on its use. However, whilst compiling it, we have realised that there is an optimum model for its use, as shown in figure 1. Should tutors wish to use the portfolio as an ongoing part of their course, throughout the three years, this model can be applied. If, however, your course structure does not easily permit this, individual sections or exercises can be used as and when required. We realise that courses have different styles of delivery, so flexibilty is something that we have tried to allow. We encourage tutors to contact a member of the project team if they require any further guidance or have any questions about the use of the portfolio.
The document as it stands now is a snapshot of some of the most successful and innovative exercises that have been collected by the project team (Level 1). These exercises come from a number of different universities and individuals, all of whom are sourced in the appropriate exercises and sections.
Naturally, as more material comes available, the portfolio will need updating and this is why it has been compiled as a loose-leaf document.
Users are encouraged to contribute more material to the Level 1 team so that the portfolio evolves with time as a modern and comprehensive training document that can be used by any tutor, in any Earth Sciences department at any University in the country. Hopefully, seeing the exercises within a common resource will encourage tutors to write more material that can be incorporated on a regular basis.
The team will send out questionnaires twice per year to evaluate the use of the portfolio. We hope that tutors will use this process to help us improve the document.
This is our ultimate aim - to create an evolving national resource which adds real value to any undergraduate degree course.
This portfolio is written by Earth Scientists for Earth Scientists from the experiences of Earth Scientists.
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One free copy of the Portfolio has been sent to each Earth Science department in the UK. If you are interested in obtaining a copy(ies) please contact Neil Thomas:
Email: n.thomas@kingston.ac.uk
Tel: 0208 547 7525
Fax: 0208 547 7497
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