Are you prepared to integrate digital tools into your student employee training?
Multiple research studies, including NASPA’s Employing Student Success project, have identified student employment as a high-impact practice. And well-crafted virtual training opportunities can help keep student employees’ professional development on track.
Here are eight activity ideas that combine the NACE career readiness competencies with digital tools, allowing supervisors to facilitate intentional virtual experiences.
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that pairs critical thinking with a human-centered thought process. Students can apply the five phases of design thinking to problems that they’ll likely encounter in the workplace.
Here are some design-thinking activities that you can facilitate using a video conference platform and an online whiteboard platform (like Miro, Mural, or Lucidchart).
Students can demonstrate their written communication skills and impress potential employers with a standout LinkedIn summary.
A LinkedIn summary is like a written elevator pitch; students can use their profile to show some personality and make the reader want to learn more about them. In fact, LinkedIn’s research suggests that profiles with a summary are more likely to be viewed.
You can schedule time during your employee training to help students workshop their LinkedIn summaries. There is no magical formula for a great Linkedin summary; each will look differently depending on what industry the student is planning to go into.
Check with your career services office to inquire if they already offer LinkedIn workshops. If they do, you can collaborate with them during training.
As either a follow-up program or a stand-alone, students can review each others’ LinkedIn summaries and give feedback. This can be done synchronously through a video conference platform via screen sharing or asynchronously via discussion boards.
Before writing or revising their summaries, have your students review some of these resources:
The ability of each team member to manage conflict within the group is a major indicator of the team’s overall success.
There are five generally recognized conflict management styles:
Choosing the right style for a given situation depends on how quickly the disagreement needs to be resolved and how important the outcome is. Collaboration is ideal, but may not be the best approach if important deadlines are missed because it took a while to come to an agreement.
Have students take a conflict management style quiz, such as the one designed by Dr. Reginald Adkins, to identify how they handle conflict. Afterward, debrief as a group, discussing how each conflict management style might play out in different situations in their workplace.
It seems that Gen Z students should be masters of all things technology; after all, they’re nicknamed “digital natives.”
However, most students use technology as a consumer device; they’re not used to using it as a tool for solving workplace problems. Jennifer Sparrow, the Associate Vice President of Teaching and Learning with Technology at Pennsylvania State University, illustrates why this is an important distinction for educators:
“How is digital fluency different from digital literacy? In learning a foreign language, a literate person can read, speak, and listen for understanding in the new language. A fluent person can create something in the language: a story, a poem, a play, or a conversation.”
To guide students towards digital fluency, consider using Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. This modified version of the traditional taxonomy can help you prepare activities using digital tools. Here are some ideas:
When it comes to leadership, there is no shortage of reference materials available for you and your students to review. So, rather than having a facilitator focus on a single leadership topic, you can have students each pick a topic that they want to learn more about and research it. Then, set up a time for everyone to share what they learned via a short virtual presentation.
For synchronous presentations, students would share their screen on a video conference platform. For asynchronous presentations, students can use platforms like Prezi or VoiceThread and a discussion board to respond to presentations.
Here are some potential topics:
Check out these eight additional virtual leadership activities for some more ideas.
Employers often cite professionalism as a desirable trait in new employees, but what is it?
“The skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well” — profressionalism as defined by Learner’s Dictionary
Notice that this definition doesn’t mention having to “be a professional.” It’s important for students to understand the difference between “being a professional” and “acting professionally”. During student employee training, discuss how students can demonstrate professionalism (acting professionally) even though they aren’t professionals yet.
Some benefits of professionalism that you can highlight for your students include the fact that professionalism:
Equally as important to this conversation is getting students to think critically about professionalism as a social construct. To help students think from this perspective, have them read and discuss articles like You Call It Professionalism; I Call It Oppression in a Three-Piece Suit and Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is….A Lot.
Here are some questions to guide your discussion:
Student affairs professionals who supervise students must model the sort of justice-oriented professionalism that they expect from their employees.
Before students write their cover letters, elevator pitches, or mission and vision statements, they need to know what their personal brand is. A personal brand encompasses the unique combination of skills, experiences, and personality traits that you want other people (especially potential employers) to associate with you.
Having a personal brand can help students distinguish themselves from other graduates with similar qualifications.
There are several steps that you can take to help students define their personal brand.
Here are some examples of how a student might express their personal brand:
Now, students will be ready to infuse their personal brands into how they present themselves to employers.
As the world becomes more and more interconnected, it’s essential for students to constantly learn about global cultures. Effective teamwork in the workplace depends on team members understanding and respecting each other’s cultural differences.
One methodology for teaching intercultural fluency is to give students a framework for understanding differences in cultures, such as Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions. The six dimensions in Geert Hofstede’s model are:
Students can use this model to discuss where different countries fall on the spectrum of each dimension, as compared to their own. You could even team up with a faculty member who is knowledgeable about intercultural communication to run a workshop. To really hone in on how culture and language shape our worldview, watch Lera Boroditsky’s TED Talk “How language shapes the way we think.”
You can feel confident in the rigor of your training curriculum with these engaging virtual activities. Don’t let the inability to meet in person prevent you from bringing professional development opportunities to your students.
What additional ideas do you have? Connect with us on Twitter @themoderncampus and @JustinTerlsiner.