Enhancing career skills: student activities

Ensuring you have the skills needed in the workplace is vital when setting out on your career. We've put together a series of activites to help students think about and enhance these skills. All of these activites can be completed remotely from wherever you are!

The first activity focuses on interpreting and communicating information, the second gives an opportunity to talk about dissertation work using visual media, and the third introduces Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

Learning to adapt your writing style for different audiences is a useful skill in education and the workplace. Try the three-part task below to develop your skills in:

• Writing – understanding and getting creative with how you adapt tone, style and content to the audience or task at hand is useful for any writing tasks

• Note-taking – taking succinct, useful notes makes all jobs easier to handle

• Wordprocessing – editing and annotating documents is used in any office-based job

 

Part 1 – Getting started

• Choose one of our many lecture recordings that interests you.

• Watch the recording and take notes on what is being said.

TIP: This doesn’t mean transcribing every word – try to summarise interesting points in an accessible way, and include a few key quotes and statistics.

• Write a short summary (max 400 words) of the discussion, which should:

  • Very briefly summarise who is speaking and what the event is on

  • Run through the points of the discussion, illustrating more important points with quotes, stats or a greater level of detail.

  • Summarise the key points of the discussion

  • List 3-5 sources (academic papers, news articles or pages from our website) that relate directly to the work of the speaker(s) and that would expand a reader’s knowledge on the issues of the lecture

 

Part 2 – Writing for audiences

You can now try adapting this text as if you were trying to make it relevant to different audiences.

• Pick two or more audiences to write for. Communities/sectors that might have different angles of interest on the same topic could include professionals, policymakers, students, academics, school pupils, teachers.

TIP: Compare how the Society writes for different audiences – for example, impact case studies for policy versus public engagement news pieces

• Create a copy of your writeup and turn on “Track Changes” (in Microsoft Word) or equivalent features to show the changes you make on the document as you make them. If this isn’t possible, just make the edits and compare to the old version.

• Edit your text towards a different audience. Emphasise different aspects of the event, or present them in a different way, or even just change the style of the writing.

• There’s no exact science to this – experiment with the language you use and think about what makes something more engaging, more professional or more technical.

• Additionally, you could even create a summary slideshow or video (for example, using Powerpoint or Canva) to summarise the discussion and illustrate key points or quotes in an engaging way.

 

Part 3 – Reflect

It’s also important to understand what you did in this task and why – the third section helps you do this:

• Print out or use a Comment function to make notes on the changes you made

• In each note, explain:

  • What you changed (if it isn’t obvious from the edits/track changes)

  • Why the change makes the text more relevant or interesting for the target audience

• You don’t have to do this for every change. At the end, write a short reflective note (less than a paragraph) on what you learned in the task.

 

 

Create a 1-3 minute video that explains your research dissertation. This task can help you get started with or show off your video editing/content creation skills, as well as helping you reflect on your dissertation research and work on how to communicate it clearly.

The first part of the task is to plot the story of your dissertation.

• Why are you researching the topic? What is the problem or challenge it engages with?

• How have you decided to do it? What methods are you using and why?

• If you have already done some of the research, how did it go and what might you do differently next time?

• If you have already been able to analyse your results, what are some early findings and what can you do to extend or improve your analysis?

You can then try writing a script or even creating a storyboard for your video, sticking to those points for structure.

• Think of your audience – this task can best if you aim for a public audience, because it challenges you to communicate clearly and without assuming the viewers are already familiar with the topic.

• Think about the length and format – a 3-5 minute video may let you share more information and develop the story, while a short 1 minute video can help you really condense your ideas and grab the viewer’s attention.

• Think about whether creative ways you can share the story of your research – for example, video content from your fieldwork, graphics, a voiceover or interviews.

• Think about how to make the technical aspects of your research understandable and engaging for a public or non-academic audience – try to translate “academic” language while still being accurate to your findings.

• Remember not to share content you’ll actually submit as part of your dissertation!

Finally, make the video! Stick to your plane but try out different options within the tools you’re using

• You don’t have to use specialist software – Powerpoint or Canva can be used to create slideshows or videos that include multimedia content

• Sites like Pixabay and Unsplash can provide free stock video and images. Always check the license.

• Social media platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok and Instagram can be used to edit and share video, or even break your content down into shorter clips.

 

Continuing professional development (CPD) activities are important to your career progression and personal development – but you usually won’t have heard of them before you enter the workplace.

Complete our development activity to get to grips with CPD and how to approach it; start your own CPD record; and get ideas for your professional development.

 

Activity benefits

• Learn how to recognise and record your professional development activities

• Start your CPD record now, which will help you demonstrate your development even as you begin your career

• Plan some development activities and think about how to start your career

 

Part 1 – Read through our career resources

Read the Society's resources on CPD then answer the questions below to make clear for yourself how to get started with CPD:

1. Start with continuing professional development basics in our introduction to CPD.

2. Learn how to recognise your activities as CPD – it’s not just formal training! Read this resource on the wide range of activities that count as CPD.

3. Understand the benefits of CPD and why doing and recording these activities is worth it.

 

Question 1 – What is the purpose of professional development activities?

Question 2 – What sort of things count as professional development?

 

Part 2 – Fill in a CPD log template

• Make a list of activities you’ve done in the last year that have added to your geographical skills. For example, maybe you took an online MOOC or attended non-course lectures to broaden your knowledge.

• Download our Chartered Geographer CPD template. This is used by Chartered Geographers to record and submit their CPD to keep their accreditation up to date.

• Fill in the various activity types from your list of activities – but don’t worry if you can only think of a couple of items, the template is designed for mid-career professionals!

• On the right hand side, try to tick which competencies you’ve developed .The CGeog template encourages CGeogs to think objectively about their skills and training in relation to our Framework of Competencies.

• This can be tricky, but can help you start thinking about how to communicate and understand your own professional development.

 

Part 3 – Identify gaps and possibilities for development

• This part works best if you can relate the professional development to a particular role. So, visit out Finding Jobs in Geography page and find a job advert for a role you could see yourself doing.

• Look at the job requirements and compare them to the skills you have – you can just tick off each skill you can already demonstrate, rate them, or write notes.

• What are the gaps, and where are you almost there, but not quite?

• Compare the skills and experience you lack to your CPD log. You can now start to get a clearer sense of how you could try and develop your own professional and geographical skills towards a job you would be interested in.

• Write down three ideas for development activities for the next year that can help address the gaps you identified.

• You can now find and undertake activities that fit those needs. Try searching your university careers service  – and don’t forget to record them