Teaching Case Study

With so many people in the careers market these days and large numbers coming out of university each of us needs to develop skills, capabilities and yes, qualifications to make  us stand out from the crowd.

Background
When I considered delivering CIPD qualification programmes I thought it would be an interesting way of ‘giving back’ by sharing my extensive HR and people development experience in order to help others to accelerate their learning and avoid some of the pitfalls.

To be able to deliver these programmes tutors needs to be both experienced HR practitioners and trainers so we can put the content into context.

The (Interesting) Challenge
I have now delivered courses in London, High Wycombe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and in every case there is a huge desire to learn and develop.  However, within the groups there is always a range of experience of HR from those who are just starting out in the career, or even wanting to break into HR, to those who are fairly experienced and want to formalise their work with a qualification.  

The challenge therefore is how to manage expectations, as after all, for a qualification we have a syllabus to fulfil but at the same time, providing additional support,  interest and motivation for those who already have practical experience.

My Approach to this Challenge
As all my students are adults they have life experiences to draw on and I encourage everyone to share their insights, examples, knowledge and experience so that we all learn from one another.  We work in small and larger groups so that both the introverts and extroverts can participate where they feel comfortable and use a variety of activities to cater for different learning styles.  After all, HR qualifications are not simply about theory but importantly, how we apply it and learn from our successes or where things didn’t go so well.

Where students have a particular interest in an aspect of the topic which is not covered specifically in the syllabus, wherever possible we share examples and ideas for further reading so additional benefits are derived.

The Results
From a professional viewpoint I have found teaching fulfilling, particularly knowing that I am developing the HR professionals of the future.  

For the students, an extraordinarily high pass rate and as one student said only last night, 

“I have been surprised to learn so much more than just HR knowledge from the workshops – improved communication, understanding people better and it has given me a lot of confidence.”

With feedback like that, I think I’m doing my job!