This week, I am in Sydney attending the annual, national English Australia Conference (EAC) 2018.
Earlier this year at the EA (QLD) PD Fest, our Bicycles Create Change session won the QLD Bright Ideas Award.
So, thanks to Pearson and the EA Queensland Branch, I’m in Sydney representing our BCC internship team session at the conference.
I am very honoured and very excited!
EAC 2018 Day 2 Program
Session Presentation:
From EAS to Collaborative Internship:
Lessons and insights where Bicycles Create Change
Many international students undertake English and Academic Skills (EAS) and DEP bridging classes to get into university with the ultimate aim of getting a job in their field of study.
There is a perception that English classrooms are for learning English, University tutorials are for discipline-specific content, and the workplace is for vocational skills. Internships are one-way students can become more work-ready. However, a number of studies confirm that current tertiary students lack generic employability skills (ACNielsen Research Services 2000; ACCI/BCA 2002), an issue that is even more challenging for international students.
I was curious to explore what a career development program that specifically catered to the academic, vocational and personal needs of the international students in my DEP classes might look like.
This presentation is a brief overview of the origins, activities and outcomes of this exploration: The Bicycles Create Change.com 2016 Summer Internship Program.
Program background
This Internship was a volunteer, eight-week, collaborative internship that ran from January 4th to February 27th, 2016. It required participants to fulfil 80-110 working hours.
The blog Bicycles Create Change.com (which has over 110,000 readers locally and internationally) served as the professional platform for work activities as it was a low-cost, high-exposure, authentic, skills-integrated outlet to showcase work.
The program was semi-structured with space to modify and self-initiative content. Hours were achieved individually, in pairs and as a team. The team met for one full day each week to review tasks, run workshops, refine skills and to discuss progress.
Theoretical underpinnings
This program integrated key theories including, scaffolding new skills (Vygotsky 1987), the need for authentic vocational guidance, participation and engagement (Billet, 2002), promoting creative thinking and expression (Judkins, 2015) and building on foundational DEP EAS skills and competencies (GELI, n.d.).
Origins and participants
The four volunteer participants varied in ages, backgrounds and degree levels and disciplines. The 4 volunteers for this program were; Sachie (female, 23, Japanese, Philosophy undergrad), Mauricio (male, 33, Columbian, IT PG), Juliet (female, 37, Indian, Special Education PG) and Gabriel (male, 42, Cameroonian, Social Work PG).
All participants had just graduated from the Griffith English Language Institute (GELI) 10-week DEP program in December.
Semester 1 2016 did not commence until Feb 28th. This left a gap of 9 weeks before university started, which is when the internship was undertaken.
Key considerations
There were are a number of key considerations built into this program:
- Strengthening self-confidence and independent learning
- Experience with unique, transferable and challenging skills
- Fostering creativity and valuing artistic expression
- Emphasis on developing reflection, collaboration and planning skills
- Integrating EAS, vocation and personal skills to a range of contexts
- Promoting initiative and the ability to generate own opportunities
- Increasing employability, CV and work-ready skills
- Authentic interactions and connection with locals/community
- Create a comprehensive evidence portfolio of work, skills and achievements
- To have fun applying skills in a challenging and productive way
Program design
The focus was to build on current competencies, develop new skills, build a professional portfolio of experience (and evidence), and for participants to become more confident in initiating their own opportunities and outputs.
This program minimised the ‘daily’ supervision and ‘student’ mentality of traditional internships to instead put supported autonomy firmly into the hands of each participant, who ultimately self-managed their own workload.
Tailored experiences (below) provided exposure to a collection of advanced competencies that are cumulatively not commonly experienced in other internships or classes.
The program integrated three main competency streams: EAS, Professional Skills and Individual Development. The program was scaffolded, so tasks became progressively more challenging and required greater participant self-direction to complete, as seen below:
Unique features
Participants undertook a series of challenging tasks, including:
- Develop and present a professional development workshop (individually and in pairs)
- Undertake an individual project that resulted in an output (ie. Crowdfunding project, publication)
- Self-identify an industry leader to cold call for a 20-min introductory meeting
- Complete a Coursea MOOC on an area of their choosing
- Research a social issue to creatively present as an individually ‘art bike’ as part of the team Public Art Bike Social Issue Presentation and Forum
- Research and produce five original blog posts on how bicycles are being used to create more positive community change in their home country
- Weekly meeting with an assigned independent industry expert mentor
- Join an industry association and attend events
- Series of community activities: vox pops; invite locals to contribute to a community storybook; solicit locals to donate bicycles; deliver their work at a local community garden to the general public as part of the Art Bike Public Forum; conduct an individual public presentation
- Complete an Internship Portfolio (documentation of work and reflection journal that documents, audits and reviews tasks, opportunities and skills)
- The BCC Internship Team: Public Art Bike Social Issue Presentation and Forum. Sunday 13th March 2016.
Takeaways:
There were many lessons learnt from this project and given time constraints, only a few are mentioned in the presentation. Some key takeaways were:
- Provide transferable and unique opportunities to develop ‘generic employability’, critical reflection and creative problem-solving skills
- Provide integrated, genuine and practical ways to apply skills
- Celebrate strategies, ‘sticky points’, ‘misfires’ ‘pregnant opportunities’ and successes
- Make tasks more challenging and higher profile
- Participants loved having more contact with the local community
- Adaptations are needed for aspects to be taken up by educational institutions
- Work from the end result backwards (CV and skill development)
- Have visible, productive and meaningful evidence (or body) of work
- Foster ability to independently create own opportunities and networks
- Honour unexpected outcomes
- Change the mindset to change to experience
References:
ACCI/BCA (2002) Employability skills for the future, DEST, Canberra.
ACNielsen Research Services (2000) Employer satisfaction with graduate skills: research report, Evaluations and Investigations Programme Higher Education Division, Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA).
Billett, S. (2002). Workplace pedagogic practices: Participation and learning. Australian Vocational Education Review, 9(1), 28-38.
Griffith English Language Institute (GELI): Direct Entry Program. (n.d.) Retrieved from: https://www.griffith.edu.au/international/griffith-english-language-institute.
Judkins, R. (2015). The art of creative thinking. Hachette UK.
Lyons, M. (2006). National Prosperity, Local Choice and Civic Engagement: A New Partnership between Central and Local Government for the 21st Century. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
McLennan, B., & Keating, S. (2008, June). Work-integrated learning (WIL) in Australian universities: The challenges of mainstreaming WIL. In ALTC NAGCAS National Symposium (pp. 2-14).
Vygotsky, L. (1987). Zone of proximal development. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, 5291, 157.