Launching the Bristol Skills Profile has been the culmination of nearly two years of development work with students, staff and employers. But what is it, why the focus on skills, and how will we be using it across the University? All important questions that we will try and answer in this mini-series of blog posts.
We’ll start with an overview, with more in-depth blogs to follow.
What is the Bristol Skills Profile?
To develop strong scholars and prepare students for their future, we have identified nine skills that we want all students to develop during their time at Bristol. This is an important part of our University vision, ensuring students gain the future skills needed to thrive in a changing world.
The Bristol Skills Profile is made up of nine skills and categorised using Barnett and Coate’s educational model of ‘knowing, acting and being’ (Barnett and Coate, 2005. Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education. Open University Press).
The skills fall under the following questions:
What will I learn?
- Academic skills
- Research skills
- Knowledge handling skills
What will I be able to do?
- Work well independently
- Work well with others
- Work well across communities
What will I become?
- Proactive about my wellbeing
- Clear about my direction
- Ready for the future
Why a focus on skills?
Students are developing skills all the time through their studies, extracurricular activities, and day to day lives. But they may not be conscious of the skills they are acquiring if they don’t take time to reflect and record their progress in a purposeful way, which is what we are looking to achieve with the introduction of the Bristol Skills Profile, and the My Skills platform.
Rather than the Bristol Skills Profile being ‘another thing to do’, the intention (and indeed the feedback from a series of pilots we ran with schools across the University) is that it is something that has the potential to join up huge swathes of education and student experience.
These skills relate to all our students but are flexible enough for you to adapt them to your discipline. Adopting a university-wide approach to supporting students’ skills development will help them to reflect on and talk about what they are learning, what they can do, and how their experience has changed them during their time studying here and beyond. Whether that’s supporting transition into university, improving programme design or assessment, writing ILOs, or integrating themes like wellbeing: there are plenty of hooks. A consistent structure (knowing, acting and being) and consistent narrative will help you contextualise the skills to your own disciplines and help students develop a common language.
What does it mean for me?
We are asking colleagues across the University to identify ways they can embed the Bristol Skills Profile in their area of work to help students recognise the skills they are developing.
If these skills are embedded throughout a student’s journey at Bristol, they will:
- support students to function well whilst at university;
- enable students to reflect on and develop the skills they need for academic success;
- help students to reflect on and develop the skills they need for the future;
- create a clear and consistent skills narrative across the institution;
- demonstrate to the Regulator (and others) how we prepare students for a successful future.
Over the next few blog posts we’ll share some insights from the launch and pilots so far. In the meantime, find out how you can use the Bristol Skills Profile with personal tutoring, curriculum design and extra-curricular activities and join the Teams channel where we’ll continue to share ideas and resources.
