Object Based Learning in Employability Education

It’s taken me a few weeks to process what I am studying on the PgCert, and how to manage this with my workload but here goes my first blog post for this unit.

Although we have had a month’s worth of learning on the PgCert, the Object Based Learning seminar from Judy Willcocks and the Archiving team was the first to really make me question my teaching methods, and how I can improve this.

Often, in my teaching, I showcase documents such as CVs, portfolios, cover letters (and more), but during this session I began questioning how to bring in alternative objects to these lessons. Could I have the students bring in examples of their own work and we could discuss these related to skills and experience, and how to articulate them? Could I initiate the use of the special collections and archives to highlight artist progression and multiple ways of working?

I am currently creating a lesson for one of the courses I work with, in which they want to cover the topic of “Ways to Make a Living” and during this planning, I have decided to get them each to bring in an example of their work. I want this session to be extremely discussion based through the objects, but then contextualised with my own knowledge of industry and employability. I think this will allow me to forget about my presentation (which can often be my comfort zone), and allow me to explore a more organic approach to the lesson.