Beyond the meet and greet

Making connections and building professional networking skills to enhance the student experience for first year university students

Abstract

Kinesiology is a broad field of study. It encompasses many subdisciplines that can lead to professional careers within the allied health fields, in education, and in coaching and leadership. Professionalism and networking skills are essential in these careers and as a result are key learning outcomes within the kinesiology degree pathway. A series of in class activities helped students in semester one year one of their degree develop a 30 second professional pitch to introduce themselves, their interests in the field of kinesiology, and their future career aspirations. Students then attended the Foundations of Kinesiology Professional Networking Event with their class peers as well as invited guests that included faculty, staff, and leaders from the campus wide community. This presentation will provide an overview of the experiential learning activity, the assessment used for its evaluation, and a summary of the reported student experiences collected via a reflection assignment from the past two consecutive years.