In advance of the publication of ‘Lighting the Labyrinth: Enhancing Student Success through the 3Es’, the new case study collection from Advance HE, Dr Pauldy Otermans and Dr Stephanie Baines, both Senior Lecturers in Psychology at Brunel University London, share their thoughts on how assessments can be used in an authentic way to prepare students for the graduate world.
The job market is an ever-changing environment and can be difficult to navigate for our current study cohorts. In addition, for many students their career path following graduation is not clear and there are multiple avenues they can follow. Therefore, it is our responsibility to prepare our students in the best way possible to the many opportunities they may pursue following their studies.
One way to do this is by ensuring we equip them with a comprehensive set of transferable skills. This can be done in many different ways, ie in teaching sessions, outside of the curriculum, and their assessments. In our project featured in 'Lighting the Labyrinth: Enhancing Student Success through the 3Es’, the new case study collection from Advance HE, we focus on adapting our assessments to be more authentic. This leads us to the following research question: how can we incorporate elements of authenticity into our assessments to ensure our students have the right skills, knowledge and experience to best prepare them for the ever-changing graduate workplace and the variety of jobs students get into?
