Educational collaboration as a means to foster authentic learning and enhance employability

Abstract

Introduction: The need to prepare higher education students to face the job market makes it crucial to develop real world and hands-on activities. It is also important to consider the mobility between companies and countries, which makes students’ career path unpredictable. Thus, the teaching-learning process should be multidirectional, with a concern to provide tools and information sources that can be used in knowledge construction.

Objectives: To stimulate interinstitutional collaboration; Foster situational and communicational authenticity through real activities of interpretation of local heritage through guided tours; Improve the quality of outputs produced by students; identify students' perceptions after carrying out the activity.

Methods: This is a collaborative project carried out within English language courses with students from two higher education degrees in different cities. The project encompassed a preparation phase, drawing a script with the main points of interest of their cities. After the elaboration of interpretive scripts and at the end of the experience of conducting the guided tour, the students answered an anonymous questionnaire where they expressed their perceptions.

Results: From the final SWOT analysis it was verified that, among other aspects, one of the strengths of this methodology is the preparation for future activities with real audiences; one of the weakest points was the perception of insecurity before the real groups; the threats are centered, among other aspects in the group of visitors, and the identified opportunities refer mainly to the positive experience to face the labor market.

Conclusions: The development of interinstitutional collaborative activities was relevant for students, especially in the perspective of preparation for similar situations in the labor market.