Skills for Success: Student-Focused, Chemistry-Based, Skills-Developing, Open-Ended Project Work

Chemistry graduates follow many different career paths. Skills for Success allows students to develop professional skills of relevance to their ambitions by choosing project work from a range varying both in chemistry content and nature of activity. Students apply for a project, do their project, and reflect on what they have learned throughout. This design incentivizes good quality application and personal reflection and allows for ready customization of project work both by students and module conveners. Projects have minimal staff input affording students responsibility for the direction and output of their work. Assessment enables students to perform in application, project, and reflection phases. Students make good use of the choice aspect of Skills for Success. They take responsibility for their work and excel doing so, and they develop critical reflection skills. Student evaluation comments are generally positive and appreciative of the nature of the work.