Students, Research and Employability in the Faculty of Arts 9 June 2011
Research-led teaching and your future career What is research-led teaching? The University of Leeds is a research-intensive university, which means that your academic tutors, in addition to teaching, are engaged in their own research. At Leeds, a significant proportion of the quality of research in the arts and humanities has been judged as world-leading or internationally excellent. This excellence in research underpins the content of your modules and your degree programme, hence the term ‘research-led teaching’. Your exposure to cutting-edge research helps you to become a researcher yourself. By Level 3, you will have acquired the skills and knowledge to be able to operate as a researcher in your own right, capable of approaching the same type of research questions as your tutors, and able to produce well-researched and argued responses. Within your programme you have both the opportunity to learn from – and challenge, question and debate with – recognised experts in your subject area, coupled with opportunities to explore your own research interests. Why is research-led teaching valuable for your employability? The top ten skills10 that graduate employers are looking for include Communication, Team-working, Integrity, Intellectual Ability, Confidence, Planning & Organisational skills and Literacy. You will have opportunities throughout your programme to demonstrate and develop all of these skills: in researching and writing assignments, in group activities, and in seminars and tutorials. As you embark on your own research, you will work collegially with your peers and with your academic tutors as part of a community of scholars. Embracing this culture of research will benefit your academic performance; it will also mean that you develop skills that employers value highly. It will give you immediate benefits, in terms of strengthening job applications, if you are able to speak confidently about the skills you’ve gained in your studies, about how you’ve made the most of opportunities at Leeds to benefit from our emphasis on research-led teaching, and if you are able to produce a compelling narrative about how you’ve demonstrated qualities in particular aspects of your research (perhaps in a dissertation, or a particular approach to a presentation, or other opportunities to take part in research projects). And it will bring you long-term benefits, lasting throughout your career. You will become:
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Confident in analysing and presenting complex knowledge. Organisations need individuals who can understand, analyse and present complex information, whatever the subject.
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Able to approach research questions and understand the research methods used to investigate and establish knowledge. Any organisation must make decisions – from the strategic and the global, to the operational and the local – based on accurate information. Knowing how to approach, investigate and gather relevant information, and knowing how to differentiate between types of information, is vital.
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Able to plan, research and manage your own research projects. Graduate-level jobs require you to manage your own workload, take responsibility for the quality of your work, and handle complexity.
The Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE), 2008.
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