Out of the comfort zone: enhancing work-based learning about employability through student reflection on work placements

Abstract

This paper examines the work-based learning about employability reported by 26 undergraduate Geography and Environmental Management students on part-time, unpaid work placements. The students' “reflective essays” emphasized their learning more in terms of emotional challenges than in terms of skills, as being pushed out of their “comfort zone” forced them to be more proactive, tackle unfamiliar activities and develop emotionally. This conceptualizes employability as more than skills and as integrative, reflective and adaptable. This also emphasizes that higher education institutions must support employability and work-based learning outside the academic zone and better integrate off-campus work-based learning with on-campus reflection.

Keywords::

• employability
• work-based learning
• work-related learning
• work experience
• placements
• reflection

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the students who completed placements in 2011–2012 and gave permission for their reflections to be used in this paper. Special thanks to Jennifer Nielsen, Ross Brereton and Graham Scott, who contributed ideas to and commented on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

^1. High Fliers (2012, p.12) reported that graduate employers expect to fill a third of their 2012 vacancies with “undergraduates who have had previous work experience with their organizations,” reinforcing the importance of work experience for future employment.

^2. The “reflective essay” had previously been called a “reflective diary” or “log”, but had been changed because of the tendency of students, especially the weaker writers (noted also by Dummer et al. 2008), to submit a very descriptive, chronological and visit-by-visit account and thus fail to identify broader patterns of learning.