From Consultation to Co-Creation: Partnering with Students to Enhance Engagement with Employability Enrichment Activities

Abstract

This paper captures a ‘students as partners’ project, in which final-year students took on the role of pedagogic consultants to co-create an employability enhancement toolkit that could increase engagement with enrichment activities to prepare for placement and graduate job applications. The project was carried out with second-year students; it adopted a focus group approach, as a qualitative method for gaining an understanding of 1) what barriers and enablers affect engagement with employability enrichment activities and 2) how the authentic lived experiences of peers may provide additional support.    

Preliminary findings highlight common barriers (such as time constraints, lack of awareness and perception of the relevance of activities) and positive enablers (such as mentorship and peer influence). Understanding and addressing the barriers while at the same time focusing on enablers and harnessing the lived experiences of peers may well help institutions significantly to increase students’ participation in employability enrichment activities and, as a result, improve their educational gain, acquisition of transferable skills and readiness for employment.