General transferable skills: learning methods and forms of accreditation

(Transcript of a section of the General transferable skills report, 1998)

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Learning methods

FLIAs has been said, the support given to students in acquiring general transferable skills requires exercises to be planned in order to give students the opportunity to practice and develop the relevant skills.

Whereas activities designed to transmit information, such as lectures, can be conducted in large groups with relatively little participation by students, activities designed to promote general transferable skills must, of necessity, be active learning experiences for students.

If large groups are to be taught, they will have to be organised into smaller, active learning groups which can carry out tasks and reflect on their learning. The examples of practice show how a number of institutions have used activities of this kind to develop skills. In a number of cases, the exercises have been the vehicle for learning substantive law through research and application, rather than through systematic presentation and coverage of a syllabus.

General transferable skills are useful to active learning in higher education, as well as to employment, and their promotion matches the concerns of institutions to promote different methods of learning which are more resource-based and less tutor-centred.

The resource implications of promoting general transferable skills are not insignificant. Even the support of skills such as oral communication will take staff time and other resources, for example a camcorder to record sessions so that students can observe themselves.

In the likely economic climate of higher education, the resource issues can only be resolved by reassigning resources. A number of the examples of practice show that promoting skills can be achieved by reducing the staff time involved in the communication of information.

The set-up costs of achieving such reductions are not negligible. Using the Internet or resource packs will take development time at the beginning, but then creates long term savings. The use of students to run their own groups with facilitation as much by e-mail as in person may save staff time (or at least make it more flexible), as well as encouraging more independence among students.

The consequence is that developing general transferable skills is an agenda which requires planning and pump-priming. Sharing of good practice between law schools is one part of the way forward, while some institutions provide their own institution-wide schemes for promoting general transferable skills, which may provide support for the development of skills beyond the law school.

It is a matter for individual law schools to decide how far their students are best served by the availability of such institution-wide activities and how far integration between the development of skills and the learning of substantive law is the most appropriate way forward. These are clearly matters which depend heavily on local contexts.

Assessment methods

As has been said above, the role of assessment will depend on the objectives pursued. The view which found most favour within the project was to consider that skills performance is best recorded separately from performance in substantive law. This enables the student to have some sense of their achievements and need for improvement. Particularly where the process of reflective learning is central to the promotion of general transferable skills, then some form of recording of achievement seems to offer the best way forward.

From the research several models of different forms of accrediting achievement in general transferable skills were identified. Most of these are based on the assessment of attaining specific outcomes.

The passport scheme collects together the passes on particular skills and ensures that the student has a complete portfolio at the end of a particular level. Unlike the integrated or free-standing skills module, there is no mark for the performance, merely a pass/fail grade. Of course, even such modules could also be designed on a pass/fail basis. On the whole we consider that this is more appropriate in judging skills, since competence is the principal objective, rather than the refined grading used in the assessment of knowledge development.

The project examined the various models of competency-based programmes, notably those being developed by the Universities of Huddersfield, and Lincolnshire and Humberside. These are similar to the NVQ models adopted for key skills at level 3.

We also considered the recent report from NCVQ on higher level NVQs. On the whole, these required a very large shift from existing law school practice and were based on far too great a specification of performance criteria to be operable in higher education. We did not see these are likely to be a major way forward for law schools, and we note that the DfEE sees no place for higher level NVQs.

The idea that students should engage in recording and reviewing achievement in higher education has been piloted in a number of institutions.

The keeping of a record by students which is supported and facilitated by the institution could enable students to record their achievements both in curricular and extra-curricular activities. The law school would be expected to judge the process without being required to authenticate all the evidence contained in a report. The record could provide the portfolio of evidence on which the student would draw in applying for summer placements and for more permanent employment.

The Dearing Report talks of this under the term progress file. In the project workshops a number of institutions considered this approach would have much merit in law schools. The idea of recording and reviewing is similar to the student self-assessment which is being piloted in the SAPHE project. That project is investigating the resource implications of such processes and the value of voluntary, rather than compulsory participation.

Last Modified: 30 June 2010