21856 Career and Portfolio Development

Subject level: Postgraduate

Handbook description

This subject assists students to review learning and plan career paths for themselves and for the people they manage and supervise. It provides the theoretical and practical frameworks for students to integrate their credentialed and uncredentialed learning into a cohesive portfolio that positions them optimally for career choices in the sector. It enables students to identify gaps in their repertoire of knowledge and skills, which can then be addressed within the industry-training program.

Subject objectives/outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Identify your current capabilities relevant to the course and career goals and list your professional and personal learning outcomes derived from your previous experience
2. Prepare a resume and portfolio demonstrating your current capabilities including appropriate, validating evidence
3. Identify possible career paths
4. Discuss a range of career-building strategies appropriate to career goals
5. Identify the knowledge, skills and experience required and where they can be gained, in order to achieve career goals
6. Develop career support systems and strategies for yourself and for colleagues and/or staff in the Indigenous communities

Contribution to graduate profile

This subject helps you review your learning and plan career paths both for yourself and for people you manage or supervise. It is an important subject—career paths in the community sector are often unclear and overlooked as they cross over sector boundaries within the government and business sectors. The subject provides the theoretical and practical frameworks for you to integrate your credentialed and uncredentialed learning into a cohesive portfolio that will position you optimally for career choices in the sector. It enables you to identify gaps in your repertoire of knowledge and skills, gaps that can be addressed through career planning.

Teaching and learning strategies

Students will learn through a combination of set readings, lectures, workshop exercises, case studies and written assignments requiring them to apply concepts to their own work environment. Where appropriate, students will also be expected to conduct their own research in order to complete set assessment tasks.

Students will be encouraged to be active rather than passive learners. Each subject will feature 3 Block sessions through the semester, which may include a selection of the following teaching and learning strategies:

• full lectures or mini lectures (possibly including guest speakers)
• large group discussion
• practical group exercises
• small group discussion
• student presentations (individual or group projects)
• workshops on specific practical skills
• role play

Students are also required to maintain a regular reading schedule which may include a textbook, a prescribed set of readings and/or some selected key references. In some subjects there will also be an expectation that students will pursue their own research in areas relevant to their assessment tasks.

Central to the teaching and learning philosophy of this subject, is the integration of work based learning through assessment tasks that require students to apply theory to practice and reflect on this process in the context of their own communities and community organisations.

Content

• Identifying current capabilities relevant to the course and also to career goals
• Identifying professional and personal learning outcomes
• Preparing resumes and portfolios with validating evidence
• Mapping Indigenous and non-Indigenous career paths
• Identifying where to gain experience
• Career dilemmas
• Career building strategies
• Career networks
• Assessing your career
• Building power over the course of your career
• Career anchors
• Career mentors

Assessment

Assessment item 1: An annotated CV

Assessment item 2: A career plan