Great news!

In March, I presented two workshops at the English Australia (QLD) PD Fest. This event is the state precursor to the national conference held later this year.

The Bicycles Create Change Internship workshop was one of 5 sessions nominated for the EA (QLD) Bright Ideas Award.

This blog formed the basis for work undertaken for this internship, and bicycles and community participation were main features for this project.

All nominees had a mystery EA selection committee representative attend their session and participant feedback is also considered.

I just got the news our session won the Award!

Here’s what I got:

We are delighted to announce the recipient of this year’s award:

Nina Ginsberg 

from Griffith English Language Institute (GELI), Griffith University

The committee was unanimous in its decision. Nina’s paper and presentation, entitled From EAS to Collaborative Internship: Lessons and insights where bicycles create change, was highly praised by both the committee and in delegate feedback.

Hooray! What an honour!  I immediately contacted my four ’emerging professionals’ (collaborators) to let them know – they were tickled pink!

(Note: I had asked that the students be listed on the program and in the title as co-presenters. But, it is a ‘teachers conference’, three of the students were not physically there on the day (they are overseas, so they presented via video) and seeing as though I was ‘the main presenter ‘- the organizers used my name only on the program. However, the students are listed in the event publication. Such a bummer we can’t all go to present as a team in Sydney. So I am going to Sydney as the team representative, but this was by no means a solo project and the award and recognition goes to everyone on our amazing team. NG)

Bicycles really do create change!

I am very proud of our team.

We have all come so far since our humble beginnings in Jan 2016. Now 1.5 years on, Gabriel is completing his Social Work course at Griffith Uni, Sachie is back home in Japan completing her final semester, Mauricio has graduated and is now working in Brisbane in IT, and Juliet is a Special Ed teacher in NZ.

The students worked so hard during this internship (and still continue to do so!). As the program designer and facilitator, I learnt just as much as they did!

Now our project is going to the national conference! Hooray!

Here’s the PD Fest Learnings Publication 2018 with all session details:

Thanks all!

Thank you to all the teachers who attended the session and saw the value in what we were doing. It was great to see such enthusiastic interest in our project.

A big thanks to English Australia (QLD), the selection committee and Pearson for this wonderful opportunity.

Workshop Session Abstract –  From EAS to Collaborative Internship: Lessons and insights where Bicycles Create Change

Many international students undertake English and Academic Skills (EAS) and DEP bridging classes to get into university with the ultimate aim of getting a job in their field of study. There is a perception that English classrooms are for learning English, University tutorials are for discipline-specific content, and the workplace is for vocational skills. Internships one way where students can become more work-ready. However, a number of studies confirm that current tertiary students are lacking in generic employability skills (ACNielsen Research Services 2000; ACCI/BCA 2002), an issue that is even more challenging for international students. I was curious to explore what a career development program that specifically catered for the academic, vocational and personal needs of the international students in my DEP classes might look like. This presentation was a brief overview of the origins, activities and outcomes of this exploration: The Bicycles Create Change.com 2016 Summer Internship Program.

Program background

This Internship was a volunteer, eight-week, collaborative internship that ran from January 4th to February 27th, 2016. It required participants to fulfil 80-110 working hours. The blog Bicycles Create Change.com (which has over 118,700 hits locally and internationally) served as the professional platform for work activities as it is a low-cost, high-exposure, authentic, skills-integrated outlet to showcase work.

The program was semi-structured with space to modify and self-initiative content. Hours were achieved individually, in pairs and as a team. The team met for one full day each week to review tasks, run workshops, refine skills and discuss progress.

This program integrated key theories including, scaffolding new skills (Vygotsky 1987), the need for authentic vocational guidance, participation and engagement (Billet, 2002), promoting creative thinking and expression (Judkins, 2015) and building on foundational DEP EAS skills and competencies (GELI, n.d.).

Origins and participants

The four volunteer participants varied in ages, backgrounds and degree levels and disciplines. The 4 volunteers for this program were; Sachie (female, 23, Japanese, Philosophy undergrad), Mauricio (male, 33, Columbian, IT PG), Juliet (female, 37, Indian, Special Education PG) and Gabriel (male, 42, Cameroonian, Social Work PG). All participants had just graduated from the Griffith English Language Institute (GELI) 10-week DEP program in December. Semester 1 2016 did not commence until Feb 28^th, leaving a gap of 9 weeks before university started, which is when the internship was undertaken.

Key considerations

There were are a number of key considerations built into this program:

• Strengthening self-confidence and independent learning
• Experience with unique, transferable and challenging skills
• Fostering creativity and valuing artistic expression
• Emphasis on developing reflection, collaboration and planning skills
• Integrating EAS, vocation and personal skills to a range of contexts
• Promoting initiative and the ability to generate own opportunities
• Increasing employability, CV and work-ready skills
• Authentic interactions and connection with locals/community
• Create a comprehensive evidence portfolio of work, skills and achievements
• To have fun applying skills in a challenging and productive way

Program design

The focus was to build on current competencies, develop new skills, build a professional portfolio of experience (and evidence), and for participants to become more confident in initiating their own opportunities and outputs.

This program minimised the ‘daily’ supervision and ‘student’ mentality of traditional internships to instead put supported autonomy firmly into the hands of each participant, who ultimately self-managed their own workload. The program provided tailored experiences (below) that provided exposure to a collection of advanced competencies that are cumulatively not commonly experienced in other internships or classes.

The program integrated three main competency streams: EAS, Professional Skills and Individual Development. The program was scaffolded so that tasks became progressively more challenging and required greater participant self-direction to complete, as seen below:

Unique features

Participants undertook a series of challenging tasks, including:

• Develop and present a professional development workshop (individually and in pairs)
• Undertake an individual project that resulted in an output (ie. Crowdfunding project, publication)
• Self-identify an industry leader to cold call for a 20-min introductory meeting
• Complete a Coursea MOOC on an area of their choosing
• Research a social issue to creatively present an individual ‘art bike’ as part of a team Public Art Bike Social Issue Presentation and Forum
• Research and produce five original blog posts on how bicycles are being used to create more positive community change in their home country
• Weekly meeting with an assigned independent industry expert mentor
• Join an industry association and attend events
• Series of community activities: vox pops; invite locals to contribute to a community storybook; solicit locals to donate bicycles; deliver their work at a local community garden to the general public as part of the Art Bike Public Forum; conduct an individual public presentation
• Complete an Internship Portfolio (documentation of work and reflection journal that documents, audits and reviews tasks, opportunities and skills)
• The BCC Internship Team: Public Art Bike Social Issue Presentation and Forum.  Sunday 13^th March, 2016.

Takeaways

There were many lessons learnt from this project and given time constraints, only a few were touched on in the presentation. Some key takeaways were:

• Provide transferable and unique opportunities to develop ‘generic employability’, critical reflection and creative problem-solving skills
• Provide integrated, genuine and practical ways to apply skills
• Celebrate strategies, ‘sticky points’, ‘misfires’ ‘pregnant opportunities’ and successes
• Make tasks more challenging and higher profile
• Participants loved having more contact with the local community
• Adaptations are needed for aspects to be taken up by educational institutions
• Work from the end result backwards (CV and skill development)
• Have visible, productive and meaningful evidence (or body) of work
• Foster ability to independently create own opportunities and networks
• Honour unexpected outcomes
• Change the mindset to change to experience

For more details, or to contact the participants, go to Bicycles Create Change.com (search: internship).  This project was a voluntary, independent and informal project, so for ideas on how to modify or embed aspects of this program into an existing course or for any other information, please contact Nina Ginsberg.

References

ACCI/BCA (2002) Employability skills for the future, DEST, Canberra.

ACNielsen Research Services (2000) Employer satisfaction with graduate skills: research report, Evaluations and Investigations Programme Higher Education Division, Department of Education Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA).

Billett, S. (2002). Workplace pedagogic practices: Participation and learning. Australian Vocational Education Review, 9(1), 28-38.

Griffith English Language Institute (GELI): Direct Entry Program. (n.d.) Retrieved from: https://www.griffith.edu.au/international/griffith-english-language-institute.

Judkins, R. (2015). The art of creative thinking. Hachette UK.

Lyons, M. (2006). National Prosperity, Local Choice and Civic Engagement: A New Partnership between Central and Local Government for the 21st Century. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

McLennan, B., & Keating, S. (2008, June). Work-integrated learning (WIL) in Australian universities: The challenges of mainstreaming WIL. In ALTC NAGCAS National Symposium (pp. 2-14).

Vygotsky, L. (1987). Zone of proximal development. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, 5291, 157.