It’s worth rethinking how we engage graduates – they can be teaching gold

Universities seem to have an overwhelmingly pedestrian and narrow view of how they can keep in contact with their graduates. They are frequently seen as either “cash cows”, worth cultivating for financial injections, or as mentors, to help students make the transition from academic study to the workplace.

But what about our graduates making inputs to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, primarily linked to the subject or course they qualified in? I wrote about this idea in a 2020 book chapter, and from my research it’s clear that this form of volunteering offers a win-win-win for graduates, students and university staff.

For graduates there is the benefit of teaching experience, perhaps opening up a new career path or job component. Plus, the very fact of being asked back to their alma mater can be a boost to confidence and a welcome chance to demonstrate their progress since leaving higher education.

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For staff, the value of graduate inputs to courses and modules comes in the added ability to insert current practice, specific experience, case studies and knowledge into classes, not to mention the opportunity to maintain links with graduates and hear (and learn) from those who were recently in the shoes of current students.

Students, meanwhile, gain from exposure to recent case materials and practical examples that can complement and, in some cases, challenge theory. Students also gain from seeing a graduate from their course succeeding in the workplace – and thus, perhaps for the first time, envisioning following in their footsteps and seeing a life and job beyond academia.

This connects strongly with Lev Vygotsky’s idea of a “zone of proximal development” (ZPD). In 1978, he explained the ZPD as “the distance between the actual development level determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with a more capable peer”.

In this case, a graduate has the potential to enable “problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with a more capable peer”. The graduate can help the student progress from what they know to gain new, extending knowledge, skills and strategies. The graduate acts as a bridge for the student to move from current to future knowledge and possibility.

A further key strength lies in the simplicity of this approach in terms of development, administration, delivery and monitoring: all that’s needed is staff willingness to scout for appropriate and willing graduate contributions to teaching, coverage (if necessary) of graduate travel and subsistence, plus a full and clear briefing from staff to the graduate, so that each understands what is required.

Of course, students should receive prior notice of this happening. Let them know that: “In our next session we’ll be joined by X who will present a case study of X. I want you to prepare for this by going to their website and reading the short introduction to this initiative. Each of you should come prepared with a question to pose to our guest speaker, who just three years ago was studying the same course as you.” One further benefit can sometimes arise in that graduates may not want or need financial reward for their contribution.

Hazel Rose Markus and Paula Nurius discussed “possible selves” that “represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become…they function as incentives for future behaviour”. In this case, graduates “represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become”, in corporeal form. For students who might otherwise have remained ignorant of a particular job or career, this encounter – whether virtual or in the flesh – may move the student to consider a new path or possible self.

So, what do the different players say about involving graduates in teaching undergraduates? Course leaders report alumni working well as guest speakers for classroom sessions, supporting projects and assignments for first degree students and contributing to course developments such as re-validation. Academic managers commented that graduates typically chose to help on account of loyalty or positive feelings towards a lecturer, course or university – or a combination of these. Students overwhelmingly believed that graduate inputs were valuable to them, with one commenting: “It was helpful, as she knew a lot about the module and the kind of questions students ask about it.”

Likewise, from my research findings, graduates were overwhelmingly willing to deliver teaching to undergraduates linked to their qualifications and experience. They extolled the virtue of voices from the field to complement academic inputs. And for cash-conscious HEIs, most viewed financial reward as not essential or expected (but definitely welcome). Reward “in kind” was favoured in the form of CPD events or invitations to public lectures at the university.

In summary, the graduate is numerous steps “ahead” of the student and can therefore connect and lead them on from what they know now to what is presently unknown or that they need to know. Imagine the graduate as leader of a cycle race, with students in the main group following the leader, who acts as a buffer, reducing the wind experienced by the student “cyclists” as they chart their own course from academia into the world.

James Derounian lectures on community governance. He is a national teaching fellow and visiting professor at the University of Bolton, UK.

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