Contextual Background
A consistent challenge in my role delivering graduate career support at UAL is the lack of direct participant feedback. This creates a gap in evaluating the effectiveness of the support offered. However, recurring themes from one-to-one appointments and email enquiries often serve as informal feedback loops. These interactions prompt the development of new workshops and resources to respond to commonly raised questions, demystify industry expectations, and support wider audiences. Visualising this could reinforce learner agency, cultivate a sense of belonging, and help graduates feel that their input shapes the support they receive.
Evaluation
I encourage graduates to follow up with email questions or book a one-to-one session after workshops. This supports the transition from student to professional by blending collective learning with personalised guidance. In these conversations, I aim to validate their concerns, offer relevant resources, and work with them to agree actionable next steps. I provide a career action planner and where appropriate, I refer to curated bank of internal or external content aligned with UAL’s Graduate Employability offer. Any gaps in resources or knowledge provided in this bank become opportunities for future development. However, a key limitation remains: lacking a mechanism to track graduate engagement with these resources, their career action planner, or implement the guidance provided or actions agreed. The absence of a structured tool to monitor progress—such as a shared checklist —makes it difficult to assess impact or support ongoing development.
One persistent, sector-wide issue is limited stakeholder feedback. The silence cannot be interpreted as satisfaction. As Boud and Molloy (2013) assert, feedback must be understood as a dialogic process—active and ongoing—not simply as a comment passed from teacher to learner. While peer observations of my teaching have offered valuable developmental insights from fellow professionals, graduate feedback remains the missing piece. Without it, I cannot be confident that the learning is effective or meaningfully applied.
As Race (2001) outlines, enabling learners to assess, reflect, and contribute to their own learning journey strengthens engagement and fosters deeper understanding. While formal feedback from graduates is limited, informal dialogue and queries guide the creation of new content, effectively positioning graduates as co-creators of the learning experience.
Moving forwards
Training on fostering a sense of belonging in online learning spaces, Ross, Lewis (2022) a key insight resonated with me: building a strong relationship with the facilitator often precedes confidence in peer-to-peer engagement (Thomas, 2012). This affirms the importance of relational pedagogy in career education, where trust with the facilitator can unlock learner participation. While I promote one-to-one follow-ups, engagement is inconsistent. Previously, I trialled requesting updates a few weeks after the initial session. Despite good intentions, the low response rates made the time-intensive nature unsustainable.
However, follow-up and feedback should not be omitted. Rather, signals the need to embed follow-up opportunities more organically into the graduate offer. Designing a development journey that inherently includes check-ins—perhaps tied to milestone moments or the structure of a learning programme—could make reflection and feedback feel like a natural part of the learning cycle.
Moving forward, I plan to trial a self-tracking checklist integrated into workshop resources, encouraging graduates to monitor their own progress while giving me a clearer view of their development pathway. This low-barrier tool may provide a more sustainable means of dialogue, accountability, and insight into graduate learning journeys.
References:
- Race, P. (2001) A Briefing on Self, Peer and Group Assessment. LTSN Generic Centre. From ‘The Lecturer’s Toolkit’, 2nd Edition, Kogan Page.
- Boud, D. and Molloy, E. (2013) Feedback in Higher and Professional Education: Understanding it and doing it well. London: Routledge.
- Thomas, L. (2012) Building student engagement and belonging in Higher Education at a time of change. Final report for the What Works? Student Retention & Success programme. London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Available at: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.creode.advancehe-document-manager/documents/hea/private/what_works_final_report_1568036657.pdf (Accessed: 12 March 2025).
- Ross, J. and Lewis, R. (2022) Belonging and engagement in online spaces. University of the Arts London. Available at: https://artslondon.sharepoint.com/teams/AcademicPracticeProgrammeTeam-TPPunitSpring2025/Shared%20Documents/TPP%20unit%20Spring%202025/TPP%202025%20Reading/Workshop%201/Workshop%201%20Set%20Reading%20(Teaching%20at%20UAL)/Ross%20%26%20Lewis%202022%20UAL%20-%20Belonging%20%26%20engagement%20in%20online%20spaces.pdf (Accessed: 5 April 2025).