The University of Kent Careers Employability Award
What is Moodle?
I have really enjoyed doing the award. It has made me feel a lot more confident when it comes to applications and interviews in the future and has also made me think about skills I have that I didn't think I had before. |
Moodle is the University Virtual Learning Environment which uses interactive methods such as forums and quizzes. For more about how to use moodle see the Student Orientation Document
What does the award contain?
- Identifying your employability skills: learning how to develop these and to “sell” them to employers.
- Learning to identify your interests, values and personal styles and finding out which careers these may relate to.
- Finding out about a particular career or industry
- Preparing a quality CV and learning how to perform well at interview
- The module takes about 12 hours to complete: a few people have done it in a single day!
- The final date for completion is 10th May 2012 although we would prefer you to submit sooner if possible, so we don't get a back log of last minute feedback to give.
What are the benefits of completing it?
- It will greatly improve your career planning and jobhunting skills, giving you strategies to make appropriate career choices and it will increase your chances of getting a graduate level job.
- On successful completion you get a University of Kent Careers Employability Award to show to employers.
You can then add the following to your CV and to show to employers. "On my own initiative I enrolled for and successfully completed the University of Kent Careers Employability Award which covered identification and development of employability skills, self-awareness, identification of relevant career options, researching opportunities, CV preparation and interview skills." - Personal help and feedback from careers staff.
- You will get 40 University of Kent Employability Points www.kent.ac.uk/employabilitypoints
- Just by completing this module, you are already showing the initiative and forward planning that will probably put you in the top 10% of graduate applicants! See our Striving for Excellence page to see what we mean.
- It is free of charge to all University of Kent students.
- Email Bruce Woodcock bw@kent.ac.uk if you have any questions about the module.
I have enjoyed learning how to sell myself, tapping into my skills I previously was unaware were so important to future employers. Also, developing a greater understanding of what the employers want to see and hear on a CV and during an interview has given me confidence. I feel that the relaxed nature of this course to do assignments and quizzes at your own leisure makes this module very appealing as both a learning process and personal development. I also like the idea that anyone can do it alongside their degree, even in final year when employment possibilities really are at the forefront of our minds. |
How to enter Moodle and enrol on the Award
- Go to https://moodle.kent.ac.uk/moodle and enter your Kent login and password
- Then "search modules" (via the search box at the bottom of page) for careers or employability
- The module is called "Careers Employability": enter by double clicking on it
- Enrol by clicking on "Enrol me in this Module" under "Administration" in the column on the left.
There is also a School of English Careers Award with content designed for Kent School of English students. If you are studying English and American Literature or Creative Writing see www.kent.ac.uk/careers/Moodle/English.htm
You can even do it off campus: two students have done it from Spain during their year abroad and another whilst on their industrial placement.
How to view your progress
In the Module you can view all the quizzes and the mark you have got by looking in the left hand column for the section called “Activities”. Click on the "Quizzes" link and it will display all the quizzes and your marks.
I have really enjoyed this module, and I recently had a very successful interview largely because I put the advice on the module into practice! (BA English student) |
If in the same “Activities” section, you click on "Assignments" it will show all your submitted assignments and the grade for those which have been marked.
You can ignore several assignments and still achieve the award. For example if you have already chosen your intended career, the assignment on choosing a career may not be of benefit to you, so you could miss it out.
There is a wealth of information about everything; I especially liked the individual information about specific job types and the advice given about interview skills, as professional interviews for undergraduates are fairly rare so these skills and techniques are essential. |
You must complete all the quizzes and tests, three assignments and the feedback form to complete the award.
Once you have done this, email bw@kent.ac.uk with your full name, subject, year and campus, plus the assignments you have done, to get feedback.
Once we have given you feedback on your assignments, we arrange to give you your award certificate and notify the Employability Points Scheme to give you 40 employability points.
What if I fail an assignment?
This is unlikely unless you had put very little thought and effort into your answers, as we tend to view the marking of assignments as a process to help you learn by giving you positive feedback more than anything else, but you would in any case have an opportunity to retake any assignments you failed.
Marking |
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Quizzes: you must complete all of these.You need to get 75% to pass each quiz (except time management), but you are allowed unlimited attempts and there is no time limit. |
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Test your employability skills |
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Are you a good time manager? |
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Test your spelling and grammar! |
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How can I develop the skills employers want? |
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What makes you happy at work? |
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Commercial awareness |
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CV quiz |
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Interview skills test |
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Practice interview |
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Assignments: you must complete 3 of the following. |
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Analysing your skills: the first four assignments are quite similar, so you may wish to choose just one of these |
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Analysing your time management skills |
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Analysing your teamworking skills |
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Analysing your problem solving skills |
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Do you want to live to work or work to live? |
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Researching careers |
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Choosing a career |
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Submit a CV |
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Feedback form |
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You must complete all quizzes, three assignments & the feedback form to complete the award. Once you have done this, email bw@kent.ac.uk with your name, subject, year & campus, plus assignments done, to get feedback. |
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Comments from students who have completed the award
- Thank you for letting me take part in this module. I have thoroughly enjoyed and found it incredibly useful.
- It was amazingly helpful (English)
- Thank you very much, I really enjoyed completing the module and found it to be tremendously helpful!
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I enjoyed doing the Careers Employability Module; I learnt a lot and it helped me to gather confidence on presenting myself in my own particular way.
- I truly enjoyed the module, and I see a great value in it for future UKC students.
- I will be looking for a summer job after my exams and this course is extremely helpful for preparing me for what I need to do to succeed.
- Thank you very much for your very useful feedback, and the suggestion of shadowing ex-Kent graduates is a really good idea which I've never really thought of before.
- The quizzes are very helpful, particularly the CV quiz. I'm very impressed with the module . It's a shame I've only just discovered it as some aspects could have helped me in previous endeavours.
- I particularly liked the CV and interview sections as they really helped me to think about aspects of an application I wouldn't have considered. Also by making me analyse the skills I feel I have to offer ties in with what I can then tell companies in a job interview, as I would have just reeled off generic traits. This way I understand my skills in more depth and can elaborate on this.
- There is loads of feedback per quiz/assignment! My CV was marked very quickly and had loads of useful feedback!
- I actually broadened my horizons a bit and found some alternative careers that I might go for.
- I really enjoyed the quizzes. They effectively highlighted the gaps in my knowledge, as many of the answers surprised me. I also found the module on creating my own CV very useful, these skills will be invaluable for tailoring my CV to particular jobs.
- I found the module to be very informative and I learned a lot about myself whilst completing it. I especially liked the quiz sections and found that I learnt a lot through them because I was able to check my answers at the end (with explanations as to why they were correct or incorrect) and when I repeated the quiz I found that I was able to perform better after reading the feedback. I was also able to understand why the answers were right or wrong. I also really liked the CV sections and found it to be very informative as prior to this I had always thought they were written differently. I found the writing a practice CV after completing the quizzes to be very helpful as I was able to put my new skills to the test.
- I liked Choosing a Career. It really made me think about work in a different way. It helped me to see options other than 9-5 jobs and also explore other career options that I can do with my degree, I dont feel as limited now as I did before.
- The assignments gave examples and visual aids so you could check you were on the right track. Also, when reviewing a quiz, next the each answer a detailed explanation was given saying why it was right or wrong.
- I particularly enjoyed researching companies that do graduate programmes as I didn't really know the websites that I was linked to were available to me. It helped me to identify my own strengths and weaknesses and feel more confident about my abilities.
- I liked the parts requiring me to analyse my skills. I have not considered my skills in such depth before this and so I thought it was very worthwhile. I also thought that the module was very well organised and presented in the way it encouraged me to delve further into my skills (e.g. first required to identify the skills, then describe a situation where I had demonstrated use of the skills and finally applying them to a real life setting). I thought the CV writing skills I have now acquired are invaluable, and I feel much more confident at writing one now.
- It was all very useful, but I found the most useful assignment was the "Work to live or live to work" one, because it really engaged me and got me thinking about my moral values and work-life balance.
- I enjoyed all of it. It really helped strengthen my knowledge of the interview process and what career would be of interest to me. All the information was relevant, which really made me motivated to complete each stage of the Module. The second attempts that the Quizzes offered allowed me to feel motivated to attempt them again, rather than feel like a failure.
- That it's kind of impossible to fail, and each time you get something wrong you are corrected and encouraged to try again.
- The assignments gave examples and visual aids so you could check you were on the right track. Also, when reviewing a quiz, next the each answer a detailed explanation was given saying why it was right or wrong.
- The quizzes, specifically Commercial Awareness. It is always useful to know what employers are really looking for and this quiz was helpful with this. Also I liked the parts that encouraged you to describe a specific situation in which you were a team member or employed one of your key skills; it really makes you think about what you have done yourself.
- The tests revealing information abour your interests, values, giving you ideas about future career prospects as well as the lists of what graduates of Kent did after completing their degree.
- The very helpful resources about how to develop skills. There is a lot of stuff here I will likely be re-reading again in the future!