Information for Staff
What can Confident Futures do for you and your students?
What do we offer?
Confident Futures provides workshops that support programme and/or module learning outcomes across the University- Workshops are designed to develop skills and attitudes beneficial to students' professional, academic and personal development
- Workshops are experiential and participative
- Workshops can be customised to ensure learning is directly relevant to the module, programme and/or professional development needs of the students
- Feedback from students and staff indicates an overwhelmingly positive impact
Click here for an overview of the core workshops we offer.
To find out who your school contact is in the Confident Futures team, please click here.
When and where might we help you?
Experience tells us that our workshops have most impact when integrated within programmes and modules at relevant and meaningful points. Integrated workshops can be retitled to suit the needs of the module and the staff member's preference. This integration can prove beneficial to staff in terms of effective learning and teaching, by establishing clear and obvious links to students' learning priorities and development needs. Why not speak to your Confident Futures School contact to get some advice about the "best fit"?
Some key examples are provided below, demonstrating where Confident Futures can enhance the delivery of learning and teaching outcomes. Click on the links to read about examples of successful integration of Confident Futures workshops in modules across the University:
For two examples of presentations to staff summarising the work of Confident Futures and how it can be integrated into academic studies, click here or here.
Groupwork
The participative style of Confident Futures workshops means that all sessions will contribute to students' ability to work collaboratively. In addition, specific workshops are explicitly designed to support group work. For example, our "Knowing Yourself & Others - Effective Teamwork" session draws on the widely used DiSC behavioural profiling model to assist students in identifying differences between their own and others' approach to group working, and in devising strategies to optimise the chances of working well and productively together.
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Preparation for Placement / External Project Work
Several Confident Futures sessions provide support for the type of situations students may encounter when conducting their studies outside the University. Examples include techniques and strategies for successfully "Influencing Others in the Workplace" and appropriate "Assertiveness Skills in Challenging Situations". In both workshops, we incorporate examples provided by students and staff from previous placement experiences.
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Communicating Effectively with Others
Several workshops offer tools and perspectives to assist students in improving their success in communicating with others. For examples, "Effective Communication" uses principles from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and complementing this, "Interacting with Others" adopts the principles of Transactional Analysis (Berne 1964), each offering different frameworks to inform students' opinions when relating to others.
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Managing Project Process Effectively
Three sessions offer support to students in various aspects of setting up, planning and executing their projects well.
For individual projects, eg 4th year project-related modules or dissertations, our "Goal Setting" workshop helps students to articulate their project scope, 'SMARTen' their key deliverables and begin the important process of action planning
For projects with small groups, our "Knowing Yourself & Others - Effective Team Working" workshop (see above) assists in devising strategies to adopt productive team working approaches, eg identifying individual strengths to help with effective role allocation.
Later in the project process, we offer "Creating Convincing Proposals" (see below) to work on their part-formed projects with a view to critically assessing and bullet proofing them further, and preparing to pitch them in presentation and/or final submission form.
Producing and Defending Robust Proposals
Small groups of students, midway through live project work, attend our "Creating Convincing Proposals" workshop, where they are exposed to a framework designed to help them work with their peers to produce "bullet proof" proposals and critically assess and defend their own work. The workshops allow students to enhance their project and receive formative feedback prior to final submission, presentation or assessment.
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Setbacks are a normal and inevitable part of life and, of course, occur throughout the University experience. Research shows that students who are resilient and equipped to deal with setbacks are more likely to overcome challenges, cope with change and bounce back after adversity. The principles of Learned Optimism (Seligman 2006) underpin our "Building Resilience" workshop, in which students work with real and relevant examples provided by staff or themselves relating to challenges ahead on their programme.
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Other contexts for Confident Futures sessions
Social integration within a cohort
Confident Futures delivers various sessions within Week 1 in both Trimester 1 and 2, with the purpose of promoting social integration. Week 1 "Welcome Workshops" offer new students the opportunity to mix with their peer group and provide activities designed to promote interaction and begin the process of collaborative working.
Click here for more detail of our Undergraduate Welcome Workshop
Postgraduate Week 1 Trimester 1: "Goal Setting Workshop" offers similar social integration to the Undergraduate session, coupled with tools and space to allow for personal goal setting for the year and challenges of the programme ahead.
Click here for more detail of our Postgraduate Welcome Workshop
Week 1, Trimester 2: Our "Knowing Yourself & Others" workshop has been used to assist in situations where student groups are reconnecting following placements, or new groups of students, eg Direct Entrants, are joining an existing cohort.
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Many of our sessions can be used to support students in making a successful transition out of university study into graduate jobs (eg "Building Resilience" for handling rejection in job seeking, or "Communicating Effectively with Others" for interview skills). In addition, "Personal Goal Setting" and "Networking for Success" both target job-seeking skills and provide space to allow students to plan and develop techniques that aim to give them an edge in the competitive market for graduate jobs.
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Success in the Job Market
Get that Job! is a 2-day workshop, designed to kickstart students into proactive, self-management of their own career aspirations and job-seeking strategy. Students move through a process of self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses, interview skills, networking and personal goal setting and action planning.
For more information about Get that Job!, click here.
The workshops coordinate with relevant training sessions available afterwards from the University Careers Service, eg "Impress at Interviews", "Successful online applications" or "Write the perfect CV". Details of the sessions run by Edinburgh Napier Careers Service can be found here.
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Exciting opportunities for Scottish Domiciled Students
Our Big Lottery funded Towards a Confident Future programme offers targeted support for this specific student group, aiming to build their confidence and provide development specific to their needs.
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