EmPLAYability: bringing play into employability
Lead Author: John Parkin
Additional authors: Andrew Underwood, Emma Mottram and Sarah Sterling
Timetable: Wednesday Session 1: 13:45-14:30, Gallery Room 1
Description:
Most approaches to play in higher education have focused on enhancing student engagement as well as teaching and learning. In this session, we move playful approaches into new territory and illustrate how play can be used in employability. EmPLAYability offers a new approach to engaging students in career-related discussions through the power of play and reduce career anxiety.
We have used emPLAYability in small group employability sessions as well as in-curriculum lectures to help students reflect on career aspirations and prepare for interviews. In our session, we will be using the playful tool Playmobil pro so attendees can experience emPLAYability. We have been inspired by the Lego Serious Play methodology and adapted its use to Playmobil pro.
In the first activity, we will use Playmobil pro to build representations of our current selves and future selves, considering what we need to do to achieve our future career goals.
In the second activity, we will take a playful approach to interview preparation. A common approach to answering interview questions is the CAR method (Context, Action you took, and the Result). Attendees will use then build a Playmobil pro answer to an interview question using the CAR method. We have found that students have found this approach useful to reflecting on their experiences and breaking down their answer into stages.
Finally, we will review the session and crowd source ideas from attendees for the future of emPLAYability.
References, web links and other resources:
Parkin, J. (2023). Enhancing student understanding through playful learning using Playmobil pro. Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, 16(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.21100/compass.v16i2.1436
Parkin, J. (2024). EmPLAYability: Embedding a playful approach to employability into a Primary Education Studies degree. In S. Norton, F. Short, & R. Dalrymple (Eds), Strengthening the student experience: Distilling the 3 Es. Advance HE.