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The Graduate Voices Project - A Toolkit for developing interview-based resources with alumni

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posted on 2025-01-24, 08:48 authored by Alexander Reid

This resource is a Toolkit to create interview-based resources with Alumni. The outcomes of our Toolkit are resources such as these.

Motivation: An ongoing challenge for educational institutions is to provide employability advice and support which is relevant and inclusive. An approach we took at the University of York (UoY) to develop this provision was to interview UoY alumni with diverse lived experiences to find out what we can learn from them and their experiences. The intention of this initiative was to make sure diverse voices are represented and advice is derived from as many different backgrounds as possible to best support our diverse student body. We wanted to know what challenges our alumni have faced, what advice they can dispense, and how we can improve as an institution.

In 2023-24 the UoY recruited 10 students predominantly from underrepresented backgrounds in the faculty of sciences to form a collaborative initiative between our past and present students. Their job was to locate, interview and understand the lessons learned from their predecessors, namely STEM alumni from similarly diverse backgrounds. This was the Graduate Voices Project and it forms a body of interview-based resources.

We produced a selection of nine videos developed from the themes drawn out in this initiative after interviewing more than 30 of our alumni. These resources, from the editing to the interviews themselves, have been created from scratch by our students. Quick links to all of the videos are available below.

This Toolkit contains everything you need to run a project of this type, or to focus on subsections pertaining to what you need from these resources. The contents are fairly comprehensive and span the entire timespan of the project from conception to dissemination (including suggested class exercises):

  1. Overview: What is the Graduate Voices Project?
  2. The Original Graduate Voices videos
  3. Pedagogical rationale
  4. Initial setup and intern recruitment
  5. Intern training
  6. Running the project
  7. Outcomes and student feedback
  8. Dissemination
  9. Challenges running this project and closing advice
  10. Blank Graduate Voices Logo for use at other institutions
  11. Acknowledgements

If you have used these resources please kindly give us feedback and let us know by completing this form.

Funding

Internal funding at the University of York (the Teaching and Learning Fund) and Careers and Placements Services

History

Advance HE Fellowship status

  • Fellowship

Author's role

  • Academic staff

Accessibility status

  • Has passed accessibility checks

Twitter username

https://bsky.app/profile/alexanderreid.bsky.social

Affiliation

University of York

Date of resource creation

January 2025

Language

English

Learning Resource Type

  • Teaching/Learning Strategy

Target Group or Audience

Higher Education Students, Widening Participation Students

Learning Outcome

Employability enhancement, confidence, dealing with imposter syndrome

Target Expertise or Skill Level

  • Beginner

Institutional email address

alex.reid@york.ac.uk