Input 1 - Aspiring

Students consider the types of skills and abilities that they could develop within their particular activity. While staff will have previously created a list of the skills and abilities students are likely to develop it’s important that the students also do this to give them a sense of ownership over the list and thus encourage their engagement.

This creates a comprehensive list of all the skills and abilities students are likely to develop through involvement in their activity. This is the list that all students on a version of the Award must self-rate against at Inputs 1, 2, and 3. These skills are not about increasing knowledge of a topic e.g. coding or learning a language but are skills which can be developed and adapted for different contexts.

Students then decide which skills sit under which Graduate Attribute heading. This task is included partly because one of the University’s aims for the Award is that it allows students to recognise that the development of Graduate Attributes is important to the University and that the activities they are doing are one way to develop those. Additionally, this exercise should also benefit students’ understanding of each skill because by placing them under the headings of Communication, Personal Effectiveness, Research and Enquiry or Personal and Intellectual Autonomy this requires the students to really consider exactly what the focus is for each skill they identify.

Students do this at each of the three stages because it encourages them to consider how they are developing overall as well as in the areas they are focussing on. The purpose of this is not necessarily for students to move themselves from low to high on the scale by the end of their Award experience but rather is about instilling a self-awareness in students and to help increase their understanding of where they sit in terms of their ability across the fuller list of skills.  It can be quite normal for students’ rating to drop initially as they develop a greater understanding of what constitutes ‘good’ for a skills, prior to then increasing as they focus on developing it.

While students are likely to develop many skills during their time doing the activity, by narrowing the focus to just three skills for the purposes of the Award, we can expect them to purposefully work towards developing each of these. Over the course of the Award, we expect students to: consider why they have chosen a particular skill, to actively seek opportunities to develop each skill, to reflect on the learning that has come about as a result of their development and to translate that learning into other contexts such as their studies or other activities they may be involved in.

Once students have chosen their three skills they need to stick to these skills – they can’t for instance decide to change the skills they’re working on at Input 2. This is because students should be actively working towards developing their skills right through the Award journey. Input 2 gives students experiences of taking stock and revising plans on how to work on each skill, before going on to implement these revised plans and continue reflecting on progress.  If students were able to change skills at Input 2 they would lose this opportunity. If the experience they’re involved in stops offering opportunity for one of their chosen skills to be developed, then the student should look to other areas of their lives where they can work on its development.

At this stage students should create an action plan of how they intend to develop their three skills, taking account of challenges they can anticipate. This may well be amended at Input 2 as a result of the learning that takes place during the first half of the Award journey.

Students should also be introduced to the concept of impact at this point. While for some students it will be too early for them to be able to really consider how they might have impact it’s important that they begin thinking about it at this early stage.  By doing so, they can be considering and working towards increasing their impact before they get to Input 2 when they will be required to reflect back on their progress so far. Students should be helped to understand that impact doesn’t have to be world changing – it might be quite small, simple things but it is important that students become aware of the impact they can have on others and work to increase this.