A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
Making the Most of Masters (MMM) is a Scottish Funding Council supported partnership between the Universities of Aberdeen Edinburgh and Stirling aiming to enhance individual employability by providing opportunities for masters students to undertake their dissertation projects in a work based setting. MMM creates resources support systems and ways of working to support the smooth development and implementation of work based dissertation projects.
The projects are undertaken on behalf of organisations and intended to be mutually beneficial. This presentation will outline the MMM support systems and how this is particularly apt for STEM subjects. It also will highlight challenges faced and solutions developed. What MMM offers is more than a system for creating and setting up work based projects. For programmes it offers a way of setting up sustained and meaningful programme-employer working relationships beyond individual projects and also academic enhancement. For students we follow work of Peter Knight and Mantz Yorke in arguing that there is no rigid distinction between good academic learning and good learning for employability. In terms of employability we will outline how MMM can enhance career planning and employability through working closely with an external organisation. We also argue that MMM enhances academic ability through the application of academic knowledge to ‘real world’ research as part of the dissertation process. Finally we argue that the sense of self-efficacy that can arise from successfully facing challenges of undertaking a work based project is beneficial for both individual employability and academic development.
