CURRICULUM-DEVELOPMENT AND ENTERPRISE - GROUP WORK, RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING AND THE INCORPORATION OF TRANSFERABLE SKILLS INTO A 1ST YEAR PRACTICAL COURSE

This paper begins by outlining some recent initiatives to encourage the incorporation of 'enterprise skills' in British higher education and discusses the response of the academic community. Geographers are at the forefront of these developments. The second part of the paper illustrates how a first year practical course in geography was redesigned into a set of largely resource-based group projects which incorporate many of the personal transferable skills emphasised in the various enterprise initiatives. It is concluded that the inclusion of enterprise skills is relevant to geography courses, but they are best integrated into mainline courses rather than taught as separate courses.