Linking learning lifewide and lifelong: The Connected U

Editor's Notes

• #3 What's the difference between a student and a teacher? Not a lot! We tend to assume students and teachers are different. Let’s reconsider what teachers and students have in common. Staff and students both need to develop and maintain their professional profile for lifelong employability Identity – we need to manage information about ourselves Being & Becoming - we need to recognise our identities are informed by and inform our social network and this informs our aspirations too PPDP & Employability - Who is the HEA talking about in this quote? The HEA say: “PDP can help to: plan, record and reflect upon their experiences in a way that develops their employment related skills and self-awareness; make realistic and suitable career plans based upon their heightened self-knowledge; demonstrate both their employment potential and their ability to manage their future professional development to employers.” Establishing and maintaining our standing - As professionals, or becoming professionals, we all need to act and reflect on our practice… Our practice is our profile - actively managing your profile (as a student or a teacher) means you are actively engaged in reflecting on your professional standing We need to demonstrate our practice: Commitment to academic practice within lifewide interests and responsibilities Engagement with developing our capability (employability) - continuously developing and evidencing capabilities Continuous engagement (CPD) in maintaining academic professional standing - reputation management 'Belonging' and identity management - critically reflecting on 'self'/self-regulation Evidence of developing our skills and attributes/qualities/dispositions/presence
• #4 Common ground We have a common interest, therefore, in employability. But we need to understand employability in a more sophisticated way than is often the case: employability as a lifelong challenge and commitment to professional development and establishing good standing Employability is about developing, maintaining and presenting our capability therefore
• #5 Professional Profiling PPDP: Personal & Professional Development Planning An active dimension to being a professional How should/do we actually go about managing this? Developing our social capital - our worth to ourselves and others Habitus - continuous improvement and continuous reflection and profiling, (a form of experiential learning) Hence, PPDP and Professional recognition - managing oneself … The need to establish an active and concrete dimension to ‘being’ a professional: the common need to manage one’s identity.
• #6 The Employability Continuum: See slides from L&T Conf paper with Graham… include the self-esteem diagram Employability can be understood as: Self regulation, self-confidence, reputation and self esteem and therefore receives inputs from all aspects of life and in the context of life trajectories
• #7 Context So, the LinkedIn University (Connected U) was devised as a digital toolkit’ to use rich digital and social media. Digital-Social Age Coming to finally recognise social media in terms of it being our extended learning environment Supporting graduateness as professionalism The need to invest in digital capability Renamed: Connected U Purpose to re-imagine and re-invigorate PPDP for students Enabling RIGS Using LinkedIn to “concretise” worthy ideas which are often not perceived to be critical
• #8 Main challenge is to develop the habit establishing professional profiles using social media as a lifewide lifelong space Personal & Professional Development Planning (PPDP) for students Professional Recognition for staff
• #10 Demo https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/profiles/
• #11 1. In what ways did being involved in the project develop your knowledge of LinkedIn? It made me think quite a bit... about the parts of Linkedin that I don’t use and why - Academic It has helped me to refocus on developing new activities for my own students - Steering Group member It taught me...the literal day-to-day tips for maintaining an interesting and engaging LI profile - Student Intern Its limitations in terms of privacy controls inhibit the ability of academics and students to use it as a development space, but it remains highly important as a presentation space for all professional profiles - Steering Group member I was particularly interested in staff receiving endorsements and recommendations from students and these being visible to all. The idea of students contributing to the online professional identities of staff... Changing relationship between staff and students. Creating identities in partnership? - Employability Adviser
• #12 2. In what ways did being involved in the project develop your understanding of how LinkedIn can be used to develop staff and students and their engagement in maintaining their online professional identity? Listening to the case studies was very powerful and these will be an integral part of my toolkit when delivering sessions on this area for both staff and students - Steering Group member It became apparent that healthy staff-student relationships can be maintained through LinkedIn's many tools - Student Intern It helps staff to stay abreast of developments in student thinking and ways of learning and allows students to keep up to date with their lecturers professional development - Student Intern It is a different kind of social media space - quite distinct in relation to professional profiling and employability. Being involved in the project has convinced me that every member of staff and every student should seriously consider why they wouldn't establish and maintain a LinkedIn presence - Steering Group member Using LinkedIn’s alumni function to source speakers (often SHU alumni) for lectures and events- Employability Adviser Students sense they SHOULD be on social networks but don’t always understand why - Employability Adviser
• #13 3. How have you changed your own LinkedIn profile because of your involvement in this project? [I changed] my photo and re-write my profile to sound and look more professional - Student Intern I have not developed the 'habit' - which is such an important part of using LinkedIn professionally - Steering Group member Also conscious that I should probably start to explore long-form posts but don’t always feel that I have anything significant to write - Employability Adviser It’s a “safe space” to start exploring your professional digital identity - Employability Adviser
• #14 4. The project advocates habitual engagement in developing and maintaining one's employability. On reflection, given your deep knowledge of LinkedIn now, how important is LinkedIn as a tool to promote the employability, digital capability and professionalism of students and staff? Not only is it a digital showcase of your own skills, it provides a window to see what other professionals and companies are doing - Steering Group member I think it is essential as far as students employability is concerned - Academic
• #15 2. In what ways did being involved in the project develop your understanding of how LinkedIn can be used to develop staff and students and their engagement in maintaining their online professional identity? Listening to the case studies was very powerful and these will be an integral part of my toolkit when delivering sessions on this area for both staff and students - Steering Group member It became apparent that healthy staff-student relationships can be maintained through LinkedIn's many tools - Student Intern It helps staff to stay abreast of developments in student thinking and ways of learning and allows students to keep up to date with their lecturers professional development - Student Intern It is a different kind of social media space - quite distinct in relation to professional profiling and employability. Being involved in the project has convinced me that every member of staff and every student should seriously consider why they wouldn't establish and maintain a LinkedIn presence - Steering Group member Using LinkedIn’s alumni function to source speakers (often SHU alumni) for lectures and events- Employability Adviser Students sense they SHOULD be on social networks but don’t always understand why - Employability Adviser