A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

106 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
Commercial awareness
Commercial awareness essentially revolves around being aware of the ways in which
organisations operate and people interact with them. A commercially aware person can
reflect on the possibilities and issues of business situations from a variety of perspectives.
Themes include business planning, customer relationships, cash flow processes, strategic
decision-making, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat) analysis,
advertising and marketing, target setting, and understanding the mission and aims of an
organisation. Employers are interested in reflection and understanding of the processes
and approaches operating in businesses where applicants have worked or been
volunteering. Experience of many of these themes is acquired as a normal part of life,
through school, student societies, clubs and so on, as in Case study 3.
Case study 3: Exploring student misconceptions
Student: I’m a physics student; we do nothing on commercial awareness.
Academic: But your CV says you are a bar manager. You cash up after shifts, you
collate the brewery orders. You organised club nights, recruiting staff, doing the
promotions and the finances. These are all evidence of commercial experience
and awareness.
Personal competencies
Under personal competencies, a person can talk about their motivation, energy to
promote and start new initiatives, perseverance with difficult tasks, and ensuring tasks
are completed on schedule. Keywords might include self-awareness, initiative, innovation,
decision-making, flexibility, patience, care, rigour, meticulous. When prompted,
most students realise that they have often used these skills and demonstrated these
attitudes but have so far not articulated the experience and realised their value.
Interrogating practice
• Where do the discipline Employability Skills and Attributes Maps link with
your teaching?
• How are students made aware of the skills and attributes they gain in the
modules you teach?
• Do students comment on the skills and attributes listed in the module
outcomes in their personal development planning, reflection and
evaluation of your module?