Placement activity does not occur in isolation. It involves administration, teaching and learning, employability, networking, business engagement and more. The relationships between staff, students, departments, businesses and administrators are crucial in providing joined up communication, sharing of best practice, and effective management of the whole placement experience for students.
This document provides an introduction to "The HERE Project Toolkit", which aims to help programme teams improve student engagement and retention. It discusses key findings from the HERE Project, which explored factors related to student doubting and retention. The toolkit contains 9 recommendations for programme teams to consider, such as identifying students at risk, helping with the transition to university, building student-staff relationships, and improving social integration and sense of belonging. It outlines a 3-step process for programme teams to review their practices using the recommendations and reflection questions in the toolkit.
The document discusses online collaborative learning and proposes a model for designing collaborative activities that takes a developmental approach. It presents a helical teamworking model comprising an iterative teamworking cycle within a developmental helix. This model aims to gradually increase students' collaboration skills and the complexity of collaborative tasks over successive cycles of activity. The document also discusses benefits of collaboration, reasons for student reluctance, appropriate tools to support collaboration, and implications for institutions.
The document discusses collaborative learning and proposes a model for designing collaborative activities that takes a developmental approach. It presents a helical teamworking model to represent the iterative and incremental nature of collaboration. The model incorporates increasing levels of interaction across successive activity cycles. A variety of tools are discussed to support online collaboration, but the document stresses the human aspect is most important. It concludes by outlining what institutions need to do to effectively support online collaborative learning experiences.
Keynote presentation by Dr Catherine O'Mahony at annual ITLA Winter Conference, Jan 13-14 2022. This presentation references work by Dr Sarah Thelen on Digital Education for Teaching in UCC as well as work by Siobhan O'Neill on Pandemic Pedagogy.
The document discusses quality in online and blended learning programs, noting that quality is difficult to define but is influenced by factors such as leadership, standards, teacher interaction, and social interaction among learners. Quality involves more than just course content and materials, and emphasizes high levels of interaction between teachers and students as well as among students. Achieving quality may require a shift away from standards-based approaches to focus more on pedagogy and the learning experience.
Pedagogical Models And Their Use In Elearning 20100304grainne
This document provides a review of 20 pedagogical models and frameworks. It introduces the purpose and sources used, and defines key terms like learning theories and mediating artifacts. Learning theories are grouped into associative, cognitive, and situative perspectives. Common mediating artifacts include narratives, tables, visualizations, vocabularies, and models/frameworks. Thirteen models are categorized by learning perspective, five are generic, and two focus on assessment. The models are summarized in a table. In conclusion, the benefits of articulating models include guidance for design/decision making, but there are also limitations to keep in mind.
Dr. Mani Mala Puri has over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, academic operations, corporate communication, teaching, and administration in the education sector. She has held several leadership roles, including Director at JSPM Group of Institutions and Head of the IT Department at a reputed engineering college. She also served as Director at the All India Council for Technical Education. She has extensive experience in areas such as strategic planning, corporate communication, academic operations, and general administration.
This document provides an introduction to "The HERE Project Toolkit", which aims to help programme teams improve student engagement and retention. It discusses key findings from the HERE Project, which explored factors related to student doubting and retention. The toolkit contains 9 recommendations for programme teams to consider, such as identifying students at risk, helping with the transition to university, building student-staff relationships, and improving social integration and sense of belonging. It outlines a 3-step process for programme teams to review their practices using the recommendations and reflection questions in the toolkit.
The document discusses online collaborative learning and proposes a model for designing collaborative activities that takes a developmental approach. It presents a helical teamworking model comprising an iterative teamworking cycle within a developmental helix. This model aims to gradually increase students' collaboration skills and the complexity of collaborative tasks over successive cycles of activity. The document also discusses benefits of collaboration, reasons for student reluctance, appropriate tools to support collaboration, and implications for institutions.
The document discusses collaborative learning and proposes a model for designing collaborative activities that takes a developmental approach. It presents a helical teamworking model to represent the iterative and incremental nature of collaboration. The model incorporates increasing levels of interaction across successive activity cycles. A variety of tools are discussed to support online collaboration, but the document stresses the human aspect is most important. It concludes by outlining what institutions need to do to effectively support online collaborative learning experiences.
Keynote presentation by Dr Catherine O'Mahony at annual ITLA Winter Conference, Jan 13-14 2022. This presentation references work by Dr Sarah Thelen on Digital Education for Teaching in UCC as well as work by Siobhan O'Neill on Pandemic Pedagogy.
The document discusses quality in online and blended learning programs, noting that quality is difficult to define but is influenced by factors such as leadership, standards, teacher interaction, and social interaction among learners. Quality involves more than just course content and materials, and emphasizes high levels of interaction between teachers and students as well as among students. Achieving quality may require a shift away from standards-based approaches to focus more on pedagogy and the learning experience.
Pedagogical Models And Their Use In Elearning 20100304grainne
This document provides a review of 20 pedagogical models and frameworks. It introduces the purpose and sources used, and defines key terms like learning theories and mediating artifacts. Learning theories are grouped into associative, cognitive, and situative perspectives. Common mediating artifacts include narratives, tables, visualizations, vocabularies, and models/frameworks. Thirteen models are categorized by learning perspective, five are generic, and two focus on assessment. The models are summarized in a table. In conclusion, the benefits of articulating models include guidance for design/decision making, but there are also limitations to keep in mind.
Dr. Mani Mala Puri has over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, academic operations, corporate communication, teaching, and administration in the education sector. She has held several leadership roles, including Director at JSPM Group of Institutions and Head of the IT Department at a reputed engineering college. She also served as Director at the All India Council for Technical Education. She has extensive experience in areas such as strategic planning, corporate communication, academic operations, and general administration.
The document discusses how the performance of organizations is dependent on the skills and knowledge of their workforce. Maintaining and improving workforce skills presents a major challenge due to factors like technological change. E-learning can play a significant role in organizational learning strategies and impact performance by allowing faster training rollout and learning that is more effective than traditional models. E-learning supports collaborative learning and knowledge sharing, helping create competitive advantages. While cost savings are easier to prove, e-learning provides broader benefits beyond cost reduction by keeping employees skilled in a changing environment.
Distinctions between the Communication of Experiential and Academic Design Kn...colin gray
The document analyzes the distinct characteristics of communication of experiential knowledge compared to academic knowledge. It examines language variables and semantic categories across different knowledge sharing platforms, finding that experiential knowledge tends to use more informal language while academic knowledge emphasizes logical and hierarchical thinking. Expressions of knowledge on Stack Exchange show a tendency toward rigorous argumentation in knowledge building. Both practice and academic communities can build knowledge, and there is potential for generative conversation and collaboration between the two.
Academic Recruitment Best Practices -Project Report-Final 7.8.15Brian Groeschel, MA
The document provides a summary of a project conducted by GLW Consultants for the UC Davis Academic Affairs department to develop best practices for academic recruitment. It includes:
1. An introduction describing the objectives of identifying common practices and inconsistencies across UC Davis schools to develop recruitment best practices.
2. A description of the challenges faced, including limiting participation in focus groups and the decentralized structure of academic recruiting at UC Davis.
3. The outcomes of best practices charts, tip sheets for the UC Recruit system, and a draft online toolkit.
4. Recommendations to conduct additional focus groups to develop a more comprehensive best practices list, and to organize resources into an online toolkit to increase accessibility.
Continuing professional development in ict for teachers. a literature reviewAs Mae
This document summarizes a literature review on continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers related to information and communication technology (ICT). It finds that while effective ICT CPD approaches exist, they remain localized without means to ensure all teachers can access high-quality programs. Issues identified include an overemphasis on skills training rather than developing teaching practices, challenges developing a pedagogy-focused ICT vision among school leaders, and policy tensions that distract from coherent technology integration. Factors found to contribute to effective ICT CPD include focusing on pedagogy, incorporating collaborative activities using ICT, and allowing teachers to be at the center of their own learning to change beliefs about technology integration.
This document presents a national developmental model for successful ePortfolio practice from the Center for Teaching and Learning (C2L). The model examines ePortfolio projects from four perspectives: integrative and social pedagogy; digital technology; outcomes assessment; and scaling implementation. For each perspective, it identifies key questions and strategies for students, faculty/staff, programs, and institutional support. The goal is to provide guidance for institutions on strategies, principles and practices that contribute to effective ePortfolio implementation across these levels.
Speakers: Victoria Baldwin, Kath Lovell, Neil Gordon, Tom Mullen, Heather Wood and Rex Haigh. First National Personality Disorder Congress, Birmingham, 19-20th November 2009.
This document summarizes research on advisor training and the development of Clark College's advisor training program. It found that most advisors received on-the-job rather than formal training, which inadequately prepared them. Clark initially provided printed manuals and observations, but switched to a blended model using an online learning platform. This allowed for consistent, accessible training while reducing costs and increasing convenience. Future areas for improvement include learning objectives, assessments, and cultural competency training.
Secondary teachers’ training has become one of the key elements in educational
policies in Spain. For more than a decade, university and secondary education teachers
have claimed the need to design specific and quality based training for professionals
that wanted to become teachers in this specific level, giving special emphasis on the
didactics and the psychological aspects involved in the process of teaching and
learning with adolescents. In order to cope with this demand, a Master of Secondary
School Teacher Training was designed at a national level with specific criteria.
This master, as in other European countries, pretends to contribute to the
development of the teaching competencies that are necessary to succeed in teaching
at this complex educational level. It is addressed to different teaching disciplines, with
a general psychopedagogical approach and specific teaching competencies for each
domain (i.e. Mathematics, English, etc.)
Specifically, at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) the master’s programme
wants to contribute to the development of particular aspects such as: (a) Collaboration
between novice teachers from different disciplines simulating the real context at
schools. UOC’s programme, as coordinator of the pychopedagogical training modules
addressed to students of different disciplines, has designed specific tasks that teach
and demand students to collaborate between them as interdisciplinary teams. (b) ICT
integration into the teaching and learning processes.
Using research to_create_effective_on-linetrtkaren
The document discusses evaluating the effectiveness of FCPS online professional development courses. It outlines the current state of the courses and issues that need addressing per research. An evaluation plan is proposed using surveys, test scores, and expert reviews to determine if the courses impact teaching and learning, and if they meet criteria for high-quality professional development. If not effective, the courses would be redesigned or replaced with new courses following best research practices for online teacher training.
The document summarizes preliminary findings from the Connect to Learning (C2L) Core Student Survey administered in Fall 2011 and Spring 2012. It provides an overview of the survey, describes the respondent demographics, and presents frequency distributions of selected survey items related to attitudes towards ePortfolios. It also analyzes scales measuring faculty and peer feedback, and their relationship to integrative learning outcomes and students' personalization of their ePortfolios. The document concludes by discussing implications and identifying next steps to improve the survey and guide future C2L research efforts.
Strategies to Improve your Digital Well-being Using ePortfolios Marie B FisherePortfolios Australia
Digital well being is an important aspect of our work and study that often takes ‘a back seat’ in our overloaded lives.
The aim of this paper is to reflect on what Digital Well being means to us and how ePortfolios can be used to achieve our life and work goals.
How do we define digital well being? Why is it important?
How can we refresh and use our ePortfolios to improve our job prospects, engagement or collaboration with others and work life balance?
What can we change in our approach when challenges overwhelm or stymie our Digital well being?
SHED explored the practicalities of a ‘student-employer’ matching service which would enhance employability learning and serve practical requirements, such as, employers accessing university resources, students finding opportunities in the workplace and institutions learning more about the marketplace.
The document summarizes a project in Finland from 2007-2009 that aimed to develop e-learning practices in vocational schools and programs. It discusses the implementation methods used in various pilot programs and contexts. Key findings included the need to support both teachers and students in using new online pedagogies, the importance of teacher collaboration and interactive methods, and the essential role of guidance counseling. A model for online guidance counseling was developed. The document also presents a conceptual review for further developing vocational net-pedagogy, focusing on basics like bodily identity and interaction, and the context of skills, competences, and work. It discusses the pedagogy of teaching, guidance counseling, and peer partnership.
Benchmarking Institutional Readiness for Technology Enhanced LearningHelen Carter
Presentation on the ACODE Benchmarks at the 2015 Blended Learning Conference in Sydney, Australia. The ACODE benchmarks have been developed to assist institutions in their practice of delivering a quality technology enhanced learning experience for students and staff. See http://www.acode.edu.au/course/view.php?id=16
The document summarizes the goals and work of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) coalition, which aims to transform EdD programs to better prepare practitioner experts and leaders. It outlines criticisms of traditional EdD programs, and CPED's response through new definitions, principles, and design concepts for EdD programs. These include reframing the EdD as a professional practice degree; emphasizing problems of practice, inquiry, and impact; and pedagogies like laboratories of practice and dissertations in practice. The document provides an overview of CPED's work to develop and promote these ideas among its member institutions.
This document provides an overview of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) and its efforts to transform the EdD degree. CPED aims to make the EdD the degree of choice for professional practitioners by redesigning EdD programs around core principles. These principles include framing programs around issues of equity, ethics and social justice; preparing leaders to solve complex problems of practice; and emphasizing the generation and application of professional knowledge. CPED promotes key design concepts like preparing scholarly practitioners, using signature pedagogies of field-based inquiry and problem-solving, and creating laboratories of practice. The goal is to improve EdD efficacy for advancing school and organizational leadership.
Jisc webinar: Curriculum design: Changing the paradigmJisc
This document summarizes a webinar on curriculum design presented by Helen Beetham and Marianne Sheppard. The webinar aimed to provide a greater understanding of how a strategic approach to curriculum design can lead to better learner and stakeholder outcomes. It covered key challenges in curriculum design, areas of transformation including learning, curriculum and institutions, and actions institutions can take. Examples of curriculum design projects from various universities were also discussed. The webinar encouraged interaction from participants on polling questions regarding their institution's curriculum challenges and priorities.
Ryerson's Career Checkpoint: Embedding Student Development into On-Campus Job...Ryerson Student Affairs
Ryerson's Career Checkpoint: Embedding Student Development into On-Campus Jobs
by Paulina Nozka & Kaitlyn Taylor-Asquini
As part of its commitment to preparing students for life after graduation, Ryerson University is embedding learning outcomes and implementing a professional development program into its 1,000+ on-campus student jobs. Informed by leading theories in student and career development, Career Checkpoint is composed of five key components, including supervisor toolkits and a student employee development program. The pilot year includes test and control groups involving multiple University departments, to demonstrate the benefit of embedding co-curricular learning in the workplace.
The document discusses how the performance of organizations is dependent on the skills and knowledge of their workforce. Maintaining and improving workforce skills presents a major challenge due to factors like technological change. E-learning can play a significant role in organizational learning strategies and impact performance by allowing faster training rollout and learning that is more effective than traditional models. E-learning supports collaborative learning and knowledge sharing, helping create competitive advantages. While cost savings are easier to prove, e-learning provides broader benefits beyond cost reduction by keeping employees skilled in a changing environment.
Distinctions between the Communication of Experiential and Academic Design Kn...colin gray
The document analyzes the distinct characteristics of communication of experiential knowledge compared to academic knowledge. It examines language variables and semantic categories across different knowledge sharing platforms, finding that experiential knowledge tends to use more informal language while academic knowledge emphasizes logical and hierarchical thinking. Expressions of knowledge on Stack Exchange show a tendency toward rigorous argumentation in knowledge building. Both practice and academic communities can build knowledge, and there is potential for generative conversation and collaboration between the two.
Academic Recruitment Best Practices -Project Report-Final 7.8.15Brian Groeschel, MA
The document provides a summary of a project conducted by GLW Consultants for the UC Davis Academic Affairs department to develop best practices for academic recruitment. It includes:
1. An introduction describing the objectives of identifying common practices and inconsistencies across UC Davis schools to develop recruitment best practices.
2. A description of the challenges faced, including limiting participation in focus groups and the decentralized structure of academic recruiting at UC Davis.
3. The outcomes of best practices charts, tip sheets for the UC Recruit system, and a draft online toolkit.
4. Recommendations to conduct additional focus groups to develop a more comprehensive best practices list, and to organize resources into an online toolkit to increase accessibility.
Continuing professional development in ict for teachers. a literature reviewAs Mae
This document summarizes a literature review on continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers related to information and communication technology (ICT). It finds that while effective ICT CPD approaches exist, they remain localized without means to ensure all teachers can access high-quality programs. Issues identified include an overemphasis on skills training rather than developing teaching practices, challenges developing a pedagogy-focused ICT vision among school leaders, and policy tensions that distract from coherent technology integration. Factors found to contribute to effective ICT CPD include focusing on pedagogy, incorporating collaborative activities using ICT, and allowing teachers to be at the center of their own learning to change beliefs about technology integration.
This document presents a national developmental model for successful ePortfolio practice from the Center for Teaching and Learning (C2L). The model examines ePortfolio projects from four perspectives: integrative and social pedagogy; digital technology; outcomes assessment; and scaling implementation. For each perspective, it identifies key questions and strategies for students, faculty/staff, programs, and institutional support. The goal is to provide guidance for institutions on strategies, principles and practices that contribute to effective ePortfolio implementation across these levels.
Speakers: Victoria Baldwin, Kath Lovell, Neil Gordon, Tom Mullen, Heather Wood and Rex Haigh. First National Personality Disorder Congress, Birmingham, 19-20th November 2009.
This document summarizes research on advisor training and the development of Clark College's advisor training program. It found that most advisors received on-the-job rather than formal training, which inadequately prepared them. Clark initially provided printed manuals and observations, but switched to a blended model using an online learning platform. This allowed for consistent, accessible training while reducing costs and increasing convenience. Future areas for improvement include learning objectives, assessments, and cultural competency training.
Secondary teachers’ training has become one of the key elements in educational
policies in Spain. For more than a decade, university and secondary education teachers
have claimed the need to design specific and quality based training for professionals
that wanted to become teachers in this specific level, giving special emphasis on the
didactics and the psychological aspects involved in the process of teaching and
learning with adolescents. In order to cope with this demand, a Master of Secondary
School Teacher Training was designed at a national level with specific criteria.
This master, as in other European countries, pretends to contribute to the
development of the teaching competencies that are necessary to succeed in teaching
at this complex educational level. It is addressed to different teaching disciplines, with
a general psychopedagogical approach and specific teaching competencies for each
domain (i.e. Mathematics, English, etc.)
Specifically, at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) the master’s programme
wants to contribute to the development of particular aspects such as: (a) Collaboration
between novice teachers from different disciplines simulating the real context at
schools. UOC’s programme, as coordinator of the pychopedagogical training modules
addressed to students of different disciplines, has designed specific tasks that teach
and demand students to collaborate between them as interdisciplinary teams. (b) ICT
integration into the teaching and learning processes.
Using research to_create_effective_on-linetrtkaren
The document discusses evaluating the effectiveness of FCPS online professional development courses. It outlines the current state of the courses and issues that need addressing per research. An evaluation plan is proposed using surveys, test scores, and expert reviews to determine if the courses impact teaching and learning, and if they meet criteria for high-quality professional development. If not effective, the courses would be redesigned or replaced with new courses following best research practices for online teacher training.
The document summarizes preliminary findings from the Connect to Learning (C2L) Core Student Survey administered in Fall 2011 and Spring 2012. It provides an overview of the survey, describes the respondent demographics, and presents frequency distributions of selected survey items related to attitudes towards ePortfolios. It also analyzes scales measuring faculty and peer feedback, and their relationship to integrative learning outcomes and students' personalization of their ePortfolios. The document concludes by discussing implications and identifying next steps to improve the survey and guide future C2L research efforts.
Strategies to Improve your Digital Well-being Using ePortfolios Marie B FisherePortfolios Australia
Digital well being is an important aspect of our work and study that often takes ‘a back seat’ in our overloaded lives.
The aim of this paper is to reflect on what Digital Well being means to us and how ePortfolios can be used to achieve our life and work goals.
How do we define digital well being? Why is it important?
How can we refresh and use our ePortfolios to improve our job prospects, engagement or collaboration with others and work life balance?
What can we change in our approach when challenges overwhelm or stymie our Digital well being?
SHED explored the practicalities of a ‘student-employer’ matching service which would enhance employability learning and serve practical requirements, such as, employers accessing university resources, students finding opportunities in the workplace and institutions learning more about the marketplace.
The document summarizes a project in Finland from 2007-2009 that aimed to develop e-learning practices in vocational schools and programs. It discusses the implementation methods used in various pilot programs and contexts. Key findings included the need to support both teachers and students in using new online pedagogies, the importance of teacher collaboration and interactive methods, and the essential role of guidance counseling. A model for online guidance counseling was developed. The document also presents a conceptual review for further developing vocational net-pedagogy, focusing on basics like bodily identity and interaction, and the context of skills, competences, and work. It discusses the pedagogy of teaching, guidance counseling, and peer partnership.
Benchmarking Institutional Readiness for Technology Enhanced LearningHelen Carter
Presentation on the ACODE Benchmarks at the 2015 Blended Learning Conference in Sydney, Australia. The ACODE benchmarks have been developed to assist institutions in their practice of delivering a quality technology enhanced learning experience for students and staff. See http://www.acode.edu.au/course/view.php?id=16
The document summarizes the goals and work of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) coalition, which aims to transform EdD programs to better prepare practitioner experts and leaders. It outlines criticisms of traditional EdD programs, and CPED's response through new definitions, principles, and design concepts for EdD programs. These include reframing the EdD as a professional practice degree; emphasizing problems of practice, inquiry, and impact; and pedagogies like laboratories of practice and dissertations in practice. The document provides an overview of CPED's work to develop and promote these ideas among its member institutions.
This document provides an overview of the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) and its efforts to transform the EdD degree. CPED aims to make the EdD the degree of choice for professional practitioners by redesigning EdD programs around core principles. These principles include framing programs around issues of equity, ethics and social justice; preparing leaders to solve complex problems of practice; and emphasizing the generation and application of professional knowledge. CPED promotes key design concepts like preparing scholarly practitioners, using signature pedagogies of field-based inquiry and problem-solving, and creating laboratories of practice. The goal is to improve EdD efficacy for advancing school and organizational leadership.
Jisc webinar: Curriculum design: Changing the paradigmJisc
This document summarizes a webinar on curriculum design presented by Helen Beetham and Marianne Sheppard. The webinar aimed to provide a greater understanding of how a strategic approach to curriculum design can lead to better learner and stakeholder outcomes. It covered key challenges in curriculum design, areas of transformation including learning, curriculum and institutions, and actions institutions can take. Examples of curriculum design projects from various universities were also discussed. The webinar encouraged interaction from participants on polling questions regarding their institution's curriculum challenges and priorities.
Ryerson's Career Checkpoint: Embedding Student Development into On-Campus Job...Ryerson Student Affairs
Ryerson's Career Checkpoint: Embedding Student Development into On-Campus Jobs
by Paulina Nozka & Kaitlyn Taylor-Asquini
As part of its commitment to preparing students for life after graduation, Ryerson University is embedding learning outcomes and implementing a professional development program into its 1,000+ on-campus student jobs. Informed by leading theories in student and career development, Career Checkpoint is composed of five key components, including supervisor toolkits and a student employee development program. The pilot year includes test and control groups involving multiple University departments, to demonstrate the benefit of embedding co-curricular learning in the workplace.
‘Sweet’ strategies for higher education developers working in the third space SEDA
The document discusses strategies for higher education developers working in the "third space" between academic and professional services. It outlines an approach called SWEET - Strategic, Work based, Efficient, Evidence based, Technology enhanced. Examples are given of how the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development applies this approach, such as embedding graduate attributes, course design intensives, and open online courses. Evaluation of initiatives is emphasized. Recommendations include taking advantage of flexible roles, carefully guiding others into the third space, and creating new career pathways.
This document provides an introduction to "The HERE Project Toolkit", which aims to help programme teams improve student engagement and retention. It discusses key findings from the HERE Project, which explored factors related to student doubting and retention. The toolkit contains 9 recommendations for programme teams to consider, such as identifying students at risk, helping with the transition to university, building student-staff relationships, and improving social integration and sense of belonging. It outlines a 3-step process for programme teams to review their practices using the recommendations and reflection questions in the toolkit.
Making further education sustainable in a digital world through collabaoratio...carlococuzzi1
This document discusses how sustainability, quality education, and digital technology intersect in further education. It argues that innovative uses of technology can help make education more sustainable by bringing employers and colleges closer together without extensive travel, reducing the need to expand buildings, and adding authenticity to learning. Blended learning models that combine in-person and online education can give students more flexibility while reducing carbon emissions from travel. Flipped classrooms and learning space designs that facilitate collaboration can also support new pedagogical approaches and sustainable models. Improved digital collaboration and communication with employers can increase relevance, motivation, and engagement for students.
The document discusses designing satisfying feedback experiences for students and teachers. It outlines some key challenges with feedback such as it often coming too late for students to act on. It proposes shifting priorities to provide more guidance within the curriculum rather than just end-of-course feedback. Some suggestions include designing learning environments for students to generate feedback, adopting a role as orchestrator rather than just provider of comments, and implementing means to inject more dialogue into feedback interactions. The goal is to design feedback that is useful for student learning and also workload-friendly for teachers.
Students generating and using feedback in online learning environmentsDavid Carless
The document discusses feedback in online learning environments. It emphasizes moving beyond content transmission to focus on interaction and dialogue. Peer feedback can promote deep learning when students are trained to provide and receive feedback. Key principles for online feedback include ensuring an active learner role, opportunities for social interaction, and designing feedback so students can act upon it. Developing both teacher and student feedback literacy is important for effective feedback in online settings.
The UG-Flex project aims to transform university systems and processes over four years to better support flexible curricula. This will help reduce inefficiencies, improve guidance for staff, and better serve students in non-standard programs. The project was prompted by goals to offer more flexible learning options and changing student and industry demands. Stakeholder consultation found diversity in flexibility approaches and that current systems can discourage innovation. The project will redesign systems and processes through piloting and then full implementation.
Driving student outcomes and success: What’s next for the retention pilot pro...LearningandTeaching
As part of the Navitas 2020 Strategic Project on Retention, Learning and Teaching Services has been investigating and evaluating current practice both within our colleges and externally, developing a Retention Driver Tree to identify the activities that make a difference to the student experience.
In a recent webinar, Maria Spies and Suneeti Rekhari unpacked retention strategies and explored deeper into the impact of current retention pilots at Deakin and La Trobe Colleges.
Maria Spies outlined the Retention Driver Tree and the factors contributing to student experience and success. Suneeti Rekhari explained the processes used to plan, implement and evaluate the retention interventions, and the early indicators and outcomes emerging from the Colleges. Through this presentation, they discussed what these initial findings mean for the Retention Driver Tree and the next steps in addressing retention.
This practice-focused paper wil consider how employing the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework (CAST 2018) can encourage feedback-seeking behaviour on a postgraduate programme. Recent advances in neuroscience have highlighted that individual difference is the norm across the population, and thus questioned the need to label or diagnose difference. This challenges educators to move away from previous models of ‘reasonable accommodations’ and instead to design for learning with an appreciation that all students approach their learning with differing strengths and preferences. The principles and theories of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offer enormous potential when designing for learning: by using the UDL framework, educators can accept learner variability as a strength to be leveraged, not a challenge to be overcome (Rose and Meyer, 2002).
Furthermore, recent scholarship has pointed to the importance of developing feedback literacies among Higher Education learners. The provision of feedback is not, in and of itself, sufficient; instead, there is a growing understanding that learners need to be supported to make sense of the feedback they receive and apply it in subsequent learning situations. Literature on feedback literacy (e.g. Carless and Boud, 2018; Winstone, Balloo and Carless, 2022) recognises the importance of developing students’ capabilities ‘to seek, generate and use feedback information effectively, and to engage in feedback processes to support ongoing personal and professional development’ (Winstone et al, 2022: 58). Such a view shifts the focus away from feedback at the end of learning event, and instead advocates for feedback at a point when it can be used by the learner to improve subsequent work. This requires learners to be more aware of how and why they are using feedback, and also their own role in identifying the timing of feedback so that it is of benefit to them.
This paper will consider how the UDL framework can encourage student engagement with feedback and the development of feedback literacies, drawing on specific examples from a postgraduate programme (namely the Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice). Multi-source and multi-modal feedback opportunities are embedded throughout the programme, and students are prompted to consider the focus, mode and timing of the feedback so that it is of most benefit to them to guide their learning. This paper will point towards the benefits a programme which is underpinned by the UDL framework has in fostering student feedback literacy and feedback-seeking behaviours. It aims to prompt discussion and reflection among conference attendees with respect to both UDL and feedback literacy and to consider how these two areas of academic practice can be intertwined in order to best support student learning.
The CATS project aims to develop a flexible credit-based management curriculum across higher education institutions (HEIs) and further education colleges (FECs) in London to support progression from level 3 to levels 4 and higher. The £78,000 project is funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and will run from July 2012 to June 2013. Key deliverables will include articulation agreements between institutions, a flexible management curriculum offer detailing credit, progression and accreditation opportunities, and information materials for students. The project aims to enhance credit transfer and flexibility in management studies to address skills shortages in the sector.
The document discusses the challenges and opportunities of designing a context-based curriculum in Omani higher education institutions. It outlines the objectives of studying context-based curriculum, including understanding stakeholders' perspectives and benefits. Key opportunities are making learning more relevant to students' environment and society's needs, while challenges include ensuring teachers understand the local context and maintaining strong industry relationships. Stakeholders like teachers, students, and industry all play important roles in the development and implementation of context-based curriculum.
A seminar drawn from two projects that explored a range of assessment practices, and examined how they are implemented by establishing and comparing attitudes to assessment amongst tutors and students within three ODL environments: University of London International Programmes, King’s College London (ODL programmes) and the Open University.
This document provides a Learning Outcomes-based Curriculum Framework for undergraduate programs in Mass Communication and Journalism. It outlines the nature and aims of such programs, including imparting knowledge of the field and developing industry-ready professionals. Graduate attributes are defined, including disciplinary knowledge, understanding the role of press, communication skills, and leadership qualities. Learning outcomes are designed to start with clearly defining intended outcomes and aligning instruction and assessment accordingly. A variety of assessment methods are discussed, including formative and summative assessments. The framework is intended to help institutions design curricula that demonstrate students have achieved intended learning outcomes by program completion.
Feedback for student learning as partnership between teachers and studentsDavid Carless
This document discusses feedback as a partnership between teachers and students. It reviews conceptual frameworks of feedback and recent research on feedback processes. The key issue is how feedback can become more of a partnership. Ideas include student input on feedback preferences and requesting feedback on self-identified issues. An example from a large psychology class demonstrates aligned assessment design, criteria/exemplars, and three forms of feedback. Audio peer feedback can activate student judgment. Teacher and student feedback literacy are defined as expertise in designing feedback and capacities to use feedback for improvement. Recommendations include minimizing teacher telling and involving students as co-researchers of feedback processes.
The document discusses assessment in higher education. It notes that assessment has a huge impact on student learning and experience. Effective assessment provides immediate feedback to students and opportunities for students to improve based on that feedback. Technology can enhance assessment by providing greater variety, immediate feedback, and efficient processes. However, issues like authenticity, security, and preventing plagiarism must be addressed. Overall assessment should engage students, support learning, ensure improvement through feedback, and focus on student development.
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ESCAPES Case Study - Improving Placement Processes
1. Project Information
Project Acronym ESCAPES
Project Title Enhancing Student Centred Administration for Placement ExperienceS
Start Date 1 March 2011 End Date 31 August 2012
Lead Institution University of Nottingham
Project Director Kirstie Coolin
Project Manager Sandra Winfield
Project Manager sandra.winfield@nottingham.ac.uk
Contact Details
Partner Institutions N/A
Project Web URL www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/ESCAPES
Programme Name Relationship Management 13/10 Strand 2
Programme Manager Myles Danson
Case Study Name
Case Study Title ESCAPES Case Study
Author(s) & project role Sandra Winfield
Kirstie Coolin
Jeanne Booth
Date 31 August 2012 Filename ESCAPES case study v 1
0.docx
URL if document is posted on project web site
Access x Project and JISC internal General dissemination
Document History
Version Date Comments
0.1 2 May 2012 Distilled from text gathered in Google Doc
0.2 28 May 2012 Added collected notes from meeting in SU, plus materials from
JB evaluation draft
0.3 8 June 2012 Refinements, removal of duplication, streamlining and tidying to
submit to AP for feedback
0.4 10 August 2012 First redraft following AP comments
0.6 23 August 2012 KC Highlighting recommendations, changes of emphasis
following call with AP, reworked some text
0.7 29 August 2012 Final redrafting to encompass comments
1.0 31 August 2012 Final version for release to JISC
1
2. ESCAPES CASE STUDY
Headlines
Placement activity does not occur in isolation. It involves administration, teaching and learning,
employability, networking, business engagement and more. The relationships between staff,
students, departments, businesses and administrators are crucial in providing joined up
communication, sharing of best practice, and effective management of the whole placement
experience for students.
Benefits arising from the project:
For students
A student-centred placement ePortfolio, modelled and broadened for use in other Schools in
the University
Careers/employability activity embedded into pre-placement preparation
Improved feedback and dialogue with placement and academic staff
For staff
Improved administrative efficiency in managing placements
More effective management of the relationship with students during their placement,
arising from a central single point of contact and easier methods of sharing information
Champions in good placement practice recognised across the University as a result of the
project
For the University
The project acted as a change agent for spread of new practice, leveraged through the
University’s Teaching & Learning Board
An extended network of champions for placement good practice
An exemplar student-centred placements model, on pathway to maturity in teaching and
learning practice
Lessons learned:
Realising change
Build a compelling business case to enable delivery to national and institutional strategies
A ‘middle out’ approach to change worked for us
Gain senior and practitioner champions and evidence from practice
Be an ambassador for the project: talk to people on their terms
Managing relationships
Learning and administration are co-dependent in delivering the student experience
The placements co-ordinator role and the individual’s expertise in managing relationships
between placement actors in teaching and administration are vital
Technology provides useful mechanisms to facilitate, enhance and manage relationships, but
cannot replace the human element
1
3. Make processes transparent and streamlined for the end user. Hide the wiring between
departments and present a unified front-end service, either on or off line
Human resource matters. Relationship management is fundamentally about individuals
relating to each other – who are the gatekeepers? How can their expertise be shared?
Can the institution resource good relationship management?
Promote an understanding of what people are doing and why, across institutional central
services and academic departments
What next?
How can relationship management in HE be defined?
How can fractures in practice be untangled and re-aligned on an institutional basis?
Need for a longitudinal investigation into the effectiveness of placements on employability
2
4. Overview
Student employability is high on the UK Higher Education agenda, and there is growing recognition
nationally of the role that work placements can play in helping students to consolidate their
technical skills and develop the ‘soft’ skills that employers value when recruiting. Placement activity
is therefore a key area which could benefit from improvements in relationship management.
To support this agenda within the University of Nottingham, ESCAPES aimed ‘to maximise both
student satisfaction and administrative efficiency in the placement experience and to make a
significant contribution to students’ readiness for career progression’ through applying service
design techniques to a placements service, implementing changes, and then monitoring impact.
Selected student-centred placement processes were investigated and refined to demonstrate a
model of good practice, using appropriate technology, to support students’ experience of the
placement from preparation through to conclusion.
Working closely with three areas working on placements, improvements in processes were identified
from the student viewpoint and executed through improvements to placement administration
software and workflow together with learning and teaching activities using the Mahara ePortfolio
system.
These improvements were documented to inform central University placements activity, with the
long-term aim of developing further tools and methods to make provision of placements more
straightforward for the University. This will in turn improve provision for an increased level of
placement activity in the light of anticipated rise in demand from students seeking to improve their
employability.
Challenge
The national context
Employability and transferable skills are ‘the most important factor taken into account when
businesses recruit graduates’ (CBI/Pearson Learning to Grow 2012).
Placement experience is increasingly perceived as an important determinant of student success in
securing jobs – employers prefer those with work experience, and placements help to determine
career decision-making and improve core employability skills. The Graduate Market in 2012, the
annual review of graduate vacancies by the Times Top 100 graduate employers, reported that a third
of the total number of entry positions would be filled by graduates who had already worked for the
recruiting company through placements, vacation jobs or sponsorships. Over half of the recruiters
warned graduates with no previous work experience at all that they were unlikely to be successful
during the selection process, and a number commented that regardless of academic results, it would
3
5. be very hard for an applicant to demonstrate the skills and competences they were looking for
without any previous work experience. The increase in student fees in England, recommended by
the Browne Report and implemented through the HE White Paper Students at the heart of the
system, together with the mandatory publication of the Key Information Set from September 2012,
are focussing students’ minds increasingly on the likely return on investment from a university
education, and whether their choices will lead to a good graduate job.
To meet these expectations, universities and colleges are increasingly focusing their attention on the
potential offered by episodes of student work experience via placements and internships. At the
same time, given the growing evidence of the importance that recruiters place on relevant work
experience, the offer of opportunities for supported periods in industry seems likely to become a
determining factor in young people’s choice of course. As student demand for high-quality work
placements increases, universities and colleges are realising the need to ensure that they have
robust processes in place for managing and supporting these, in order to optimise students’ chances
of gaining employability skills and increase the contribution these make to the overall student
experience.
The University of Nottingham context
The University of Nottingham is a Russell Group, research-focused university which has traditionally
focused its provision of placements in vocational academic disciplines such as Nursing, Education,
Medicine, Veterinary Science, etc. However in response to current challenges and expectations, an
increasing number of disciplines are offering (or considering the option of offering) undergraduate
and postgraduate students the opportunity to spend a year in industry, or providing the opportunity
for short-term, usually project focused, work-based learning . The new model of PhD provision via
Doctoral Training Centres is placing an emphasis on skills and employability, and the University’s
latest BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership mandates placements for all students. There is a
placement element in a number of modules in the cross-university Nottingham Advantage Award
which is open to all undergraduate students and administered by the Careers and Employability
Service. Furthermore, a growing body of students are seeking out their own placement
opportunities, not necessarily as a provision of their course, and looking to the University to support
them in this.
One challenge for the University lay in the existence of a variety of unconnected processes in various
states of maturity used separately within its academic schools; there remained a need to ensure that
common best practice was recorded and shared, and to enable centralised recording of baseline
placement data to inform overall employability statistics, while not imposing centralised direction.
Feedback from employers suggested that for students, there was a need to support the recognition,
capture and evidencing of skills gained through the placement experience, providing them with
concrete examples to support future job applications and to discuss in interviews.
Our initial research suggested that while there was a variety of technology in use to support
placement management, this was largely designed to meet the needs of institutional administrators.
In seeking to expand use of technology to support the teaching and learning involved in the whole
placement process, we expected to enhance student relationship management in this area.
Approach
ESCAPES sought to explore the student viewpoint, using blueprinting and service design techniques
to research and record key features of the placement process with particular attention to what
students regard as important and in need of improvement. In order to gain an understanding of how
the placements process operates, we adopted the view that it is essentially a ‘service’ offered to
students by an HEI. As such it has a tangible beginning and end, and is made up of a series of
processes which can be mapped, and then broken down further into tasks, involving a variety of
actors supported by a number of systems.
4
6. We found that the wider HE sector uses a variety of different technology to support the sourcing,
tracking and delivery of placements. However we supported the view that no one universal
approach is possible (or, indeed, desirable): influencing factors include the institutional environment
and IT policy (for example, does everything need to be centralised, or do departments and services
have the freedom to choose their own approach?), and the status and management structure for
placements within the institution. All these variables prevent a ‘one size fits all’ approach both
within and across institutions, and the University of Nottingham was no exception to this.
Scope
Placement, internship and work experience practice within the University is wide ranging: our
intention was not, therefore, to include all possible models within the timescale and resources of the
project. We made the decision to focus initially on institutionally sourced and managed placements
in the open market, whereby students sourced and applied for placements with some institutional
support, either within their course, or as an additional activity: well-established placements
processes within schools such as Medicine or Education were therefore not included in the scope of
the project. However we did expect that our final findings would be of benefit to all the models in
use across, and beyond, the University.
Touchpoints for core placement activity
Our initial objectives were to:
Evaluate the ‘as is’ and develop the ‘to be’ processes within the targeted areas
demonstrating good practice in placement management within the University.
Raise the profile of identified good practice within the University via the fledgling cross-
institutional Internship Forum
Investigate priority concerns of the Careers and Employability Service, for instance,
centralised recording of baseline placement data to inform overall employability statistics,
while not imposing centralised direction
Enhance the use of existing technology used to support the placement processes
Identify how to reconcile the requirements of administration with good pedagogical
practice (learning and teaching), as both impact on the student’s experience of the
placement.
5
7. ESCAPES overview
Implementation
Using techniques from Service Design, ESCAPES mapped processes against student experiences to
develop an understanding from the student point of view, and to identify the ‘fail and wait’ points
which required further examination, remedial action or process change. The resulting ‘as is’
processes were further refined in consultation with placement co-ordinators to identify changes,
informing a ‘to be’ blueprint. The resulting actions informed either technical developments or
process change.
At the same time, we accompanied the blueprinting process with agile co-development of
lightweight, modular technical system enhancements and the introduction of new activities to
enhance career learning within a Mahara ePortfolio. These were piloted with student groups and
evaluated to inform the next stage of service re-design and to assess levels of impact on student
satisfaction. Drawing on further institutional examples and in consultation with placements experts
from outside the University, we tested transferability and established areas of commonality and
overlap in order to be able to document and promote consistent good practice.
We focused initially on three sets of students: students participating in voluntary 6-10 week
placements organised under an ERDF-funded project placing Nottingham postgraduate students
with East Midlands SMEs, MSc students in Biosciences undertaking a summer placement, and
undergraduate students in Biosciences doing a year in industry in the final stage of their course.
These all involved project-based placements for which students have to source employers and apply.
The project held three consultation workshops with students from these groups. While these were
initially planned under the strict auspices of Service Design, the team developed a novice approach,
taking the view that Service Design is effectively an evolution from the process design and rich
picture techniques used in other domains. While this approach may not have resembled classic
Service Design, it nonetheless provided a useful framework to engage the students and drew on the
team’s extensive prior experience working with groups to develop user requirements. The method
was successful in eliciting some key pointers for change.
Further workshops conducted with academics, the Rate My Placement organisation and at the ASET
and AGCAS conferences in 2011 expanded on specific learning from the Service Design workshops
(http://mahara.nottingham.ac.uk/view/artefact.php?artefact=11399&view=2585).
The resulting design documents and workshop materials are available on the project website
(http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/escapes/documents.shtml ). Findings included:
Students value a single communication channel to find out about placement opportunities,
rather than via multiple emails and sources
6
8. Use social media to present bite-sized pieces of information, tailored to the student’s
(subject) interest
Enable placement information to be broken down course by course, but tagged in such a
way that a placement could be associated with multiple courses
Use ‘Amazon-style’ suggestions for placement companies (already implemented by Rate
My Placement www.ratemyplacement.co.uk)
Students need to engage actively with the process: academics and placement coordinators
are key to this
Placements require support from senior academic staff, but peer group networks are also
an important and effective way of recruiting students to placements.
Workshop activity also gathered feedback from students, the placement co-ordinator and the
project team on the prototype Postgraduate Placements Portal (originally developed through the
CIePD’s SAMSON project to support the ERDF Nottingham Postgraduate Placement project). Specific
technical work to develop and evolve the system was carried out iteratively through extensive
consultations between the developer and the placement co-ordinator, resulting in a more
streamlined system with extra facilities for data reporting providing the placement co-ordinator with
useful management data, for instance, identifying students making multiple unsuccessful
applications and who might therefore benefit from additional support.
Notts PG Placements Portal
Biosciences MSc students were already using functionality in the Mahara ePortfolio to provide a
mechanism to share weekly reporting with the placement co-ordinator, academics and their
employer during their placements. As a result of the workshops, use of the ePortfolio was extended
to support pre-placement activities including career learning and making applications, and a
standard template for a page to be used during the placement put in place. This practice was also
extended to Biosciences undergraduates undertaking year-long placements in industry. Enthusiastic
engagement by students and staff has resulted in provision of better and more timely feedback both
before and during the placement, and some students have made use of the ePortfolio to present
short video clips and blogs. A significant number of students have spontaneously set up Mahara
groups associated with their placement in order to share resources and interact with both their
peers and academic staff. The placement co-ordinator is now using the system to manage
communication with groups and as a central point for monitoring activity and disseminating useful
information to all students, making greater use of forums. Students are also able to share their
7
9. ePortfolios with the external examiner for their course, giving a richer view of the background to
their placement reports.
Biosciences placements page in Mahara
Benefits and impact
Evidence of impact was found primarily in two areas: building capacity and benefits for students and
staff.
1. Building capacity
Providing new methods and lightweight processes to inform the University when responding
to demands for work experience (from both employers and students). ESCAPES provided a
space to draw departments together to discuss learning technology and placements
(http://comms.nottingham.ac.uk/learningtechnology/2011/12/01/e-learning-community-
liaising-with-students-on-placement/ )
The project directly informed the presentation of a successful business case for an ePortfolio
implementation across the university, providing the catalyst for institutional change in the
approach and management of work-based learning. As a result, a series of ePortfolio pilots
(some involving placements using methods developed through ESCAPES) will be run in 2012-
13, with agreement to implement fully from September 2014
Consultation with a wide range of departments in the University identified new enthusiasts
who were instrumental in spreading the word about placements and sources of expertise.
Existing good practice (for example from the School of Veterinary Medicine) has been
incorporated into ESCAPES. At least five academic schools in the University have
subsequently approached the CIePD to express interest in using ePortfolios to support
placements or work-based activity
New connections were explored with the University of Birmingham Careers and
Employability Centre, further strengthening the partnership between the two universities
ESCAPES acted as a catalyst for change. Sustainability and continued change for project
learning and deliverables has been secured through institutional ePortfolio implementation,
funding under JISC eLearning Embedding Benefits programme to productise the Placements
Portal, allocation of University HEIF funding to develop the technology for employer-
University relationships, and the JISC BCE Ingenuity KnowledgeHub project to develop
engagement with small businesses.
8
10. 2. Benefits for students and staff:
Workflow: saving staff time, cost and other resources
o Building the facility for staff to produce their own management reports into the
Postgraduate Placements portal
o An easily reviewed record of placements improves administration
o Improving workflow for placements co-ordinators
o Creating a view for an external examiner to look at information and dissertations online
in Mahara, saving administration, printing and postage costs
o Centralised communication using Mahara is more efficient than sending 100 individual
emails to students, and enables visibility and tracking of exactly what information has
been communicated to all students
Teaching and learning
o Students and staff can access and share information about placements in one place
o Students submit their weekly reports through the system, resulting in better planned
projects and enabling staff to review and monitor their progress more quickly and
effectively, spotting issues as they arise
o Formal self presentation through the ePortfolio supports enhanced students’ sense of
professionalism
o Career learning and information about employers is introduced into student pre-
placemen t activity via Mahara
o Mahara use enables consistent and threaded feedback for students, supporting the
University’s Grand Challenge on assessment and feedback (the National Student Survey
has demonstrated that receiving timely and constructive feedback is an important issue
for students: this will be highlighted still further from 2012 with the publication of KIS
data on course websites)
o Blogs kept by students can inform other potential students; information can be reused
for guidance, marketing and recruitment purposes.
Administration
o More efficient administrative processes free staff time to focus on students
o Access and support are available from the wider Mahara community
o Streamlined financial processes introduced for students on paid placements
o Information on eligibility to work in the UK introduced earlier into the application
process.
In addition, we observed the following unanticipated benefits:
Practical learning about placements, technology and University culture and practice that can
be taken forward to inform other projects
Enhanced CPD opportunities for the (often non-academic) placement co-ordinators, as
champions of good practice within the University and as ambassadors beyond, including
presentations at large-scale conferences
Expansion of University Shibboleth capacity (developed within the Placements Portal )
through an intranet space to share learning and good practice
Widespread engagement of different institutional characters – enabling ‘change by stealth’
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11. Learning on instigating and embedding change within the University through identifying
appropriate channels and strategy to address
Raising the profile of JISC resource and student-focussed activity within Information Services
Providing evidence for the business case for ePortfolio implementation in the University,
representing the culmination of many years of work by the CIePD, mostly sponsored by JISC
Supporting the CIePD in providing a change catalyst role within a central service, while also
collaborating with a wide range of University schools and departments.
The next stage
Developing change – from early adoption to embedding
Members of the ESCAPES team and steering group now have a high level of experience in managing
placements, and academic, student and employer relations, drawn from experience beyond and
within the University. They are providing valuable input to the University’s pan-institutional
Internship Forum, run by the Careers and Employability Service, influencing the direction of this
group and sharing good practice with colleagues across the University. Mahara use is being
extended to support placement activity in other areas and the CIePD team is working with the
Information Services Learning Technology team to integrate it with the new institutional Moodle
VLE. The CIePD is leading work to disseminate good practice through University teaching and
learning networks and in line with strategy.
The Postgraduate Placements ERDF project run by the Graduate School has been successful in
securing funding for a further phase of development. The CIePD is continuing work to refine and
develop the project’s placement administration and streamline the relationships between employer
engagement and student employability learning.
Focus on the student experience
Service Design techniques may provide a useful method to engage students more widely with other
University process evaluation. The CIePD will incorporate learning from these techniques within its
own work across and beyond the University, and is promoting these techniques internally with other
areas of Information Services.
Promoting a cross-departmental student-centred approach to process improvement
There is an opportunity to investigate the horizontal workflow further, examining the impact of
other University administrative processes (such as Finance, Human Resources, business
engagement, etc) on placements. The CIePD is continuing to promote this approach through further
institutional and JISC-funded project work. There is also still a need for central intelligence on the
number of placements in the University, who is responsible for them and which companies are
involved.
Developing technology
ESCAPES has provided the basis for a reference set of integrated and service-based core
technologies to deliver best-fit , efficient administration and learning services to placement
students. JISC has awarded funding under the eLearning Embedding Benefits programme for the P3
project to develop the Placements Portal further over the next 12 months, with the aim that it be
released as an open source beta system for use and further development by the wider community.
Building on the raised awareness resulting from the project, the University is conducting an
institutional phased roll-out of ePortfolio in 2013-14, starting with a series of managed pilots during
the 2012-13 academic year. This will enable and sustain wider sharing of ESCAPES good practice in
using Mahara to support placements.
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12. Employer focus
Following on from ESCAPES and to meet the recommendations of the Wilson Review, there is a
continuing need to ensure that opportunities for student placement are maximised across a full
range of employers, including SMEs, microbusinesses, Social Enterprises and the Third Sector. The
University is investigating CRM processes to support this, and the CIePD is working with Business
Engagement Innovation Services, Community Partnerships, and the Nottingham RCUK public
engagement with research Catalysts project to develop new methods of engagement with different
types of employers.
A comprehensive list of placements and employers would be a desirable outcome for the Careers
and Employability Service as well as for students: feedback from workshops as part of the SHED
project suggested that students would welcome a University-provided, comprehensive and easily-
accessible list of companies, tagged and searchable by sector, wage bracket, job description and
company information (including record of social responsibility, employee benefits and information
about former placements).
The CIePD is leading the Ingenuity KnowledgeHub project, funded under the JISC Business and
Community Engagement Access to Resources programme, which is promoting engagement
(including placements provision) between universities and small local businesses. The CIePD is also a
key player in a University bid for ERDF funding to promote use of technology by local small
businesses, which will also include building on learning from ESCAPES.
Code of conduct for provision of placements
Staff working on placements recognise the need to create an agreed checklist of issues that have to
be thought through and/or evidenced as addressed before an organisation can take on a placement
student. ‘Sometimes it’s not until you ask who the workplace supervisor will be that the company
realises they have to allocate one’ [Biosciences Placements Co-ordinator].
This need to be further supported by work on disability issues and placements: this would need
sensitive handling to take disclosure issues into account, but it is important that there are processes
in place to make sure a placement is suitable for a specific student’s needs, including taking into
account needs arising from, for example, dyslexia, dyspraxia and mental health issues.
Lessons learned: communicating with students
Students would value a single communication channel to find out about placement
opportunities, rather than via multiple sources. As students use social networks, this could
be achieved using social media, with bite-sized pieces of information, tailored to the
student’s interest. (The Business School at the University of Greenwich has been exploring
this approach:
https://showtime.gre.ac.uk/index.php/ecentre/apt2012/paper/viewPaper/227 )
Placement information could be broken down course by course, but tagged in such a way
that one placement could be associated with multiple courses. ‘Amazon-style’ suggestions
for placement companies (already implemented at Rate My Placement)
Students need to engage actively with the process: academics and placement co-ordinators
are key to this. Placements require support from senior academic staff but peer group
networks are also an important and effective way of recruiting students to placements.
Students value input and feedback from previous students most highly, so accessible
mechanisms for this need to be built in
Finance information is very important: students need to be clear whether they will be paid,
how much they will be paid and when and how they will be paid
There are challenges for students, especially international students, with ‘employer speak’
versus ‘academic speak’ and balancing differing expectations employers and academic tutors
have from their work while on placement.
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13. Summary
Overall, the project was successful : it had an impact on Relationship Management in the University
in the area of placement provision, and acted as a catalyst for change in the University’s approach to
provision of ePortfolios for students. A number of factors impacted on the original aims: one of the
key lessons has been a greater understanding of how change happens in a large institution, and this
can be taken forward to inform design of future projects.
Critical success factors included:
Support from senior management within IS and the Teaching and Learning Directorate
Close collaboration with subject matter experts, who have made incremental changes to
their processes as the project has progressed
Non-political project team, able to work across the institution crossing territories, silos and
priorities
Wider political impetus and focus resulting from the Wilson review
The project highlighted:
The importance of placement co-ordinator role as a pivotal conduit in relationship
management
How administrative processes can be balanced with good pedagogical practice
The complexity and variety of placement practice internally and across the sector
Differing interpretations of the words ‘placement’, ‘work experience’, ‘internships’ by staff
and students
The importance of ensuring that systems used are available and will enjoy continued use.
Staff are reluctant to commit energies experimenting with new tools unless they know it is
going to be supported in the long term.
The need to reconcile the needs of all stakeholders, in particularly, students and employers
How Service Design can be used successfully through flexible adaptation of its methods to
suit different audiences.
A pivotal relationship manager: the placement co-ordinator role
The Placement Co-ordinator role should not be underestimated. This person can
help students to find and choose suitable companies, give support with their
application, through to communication for both academic and pastoral purposes.
‘Every year a student will do something that astounds the placement administrator (e.g.
turning up to work in their pyjamas!’ [Biosciences Placements Co-ordinator]). Where
possible, placements/placement support should be personalised. Some students require
more structure and guidance than others and need to be placed with employers that match
their requirements; sending the right students on placements is important. An unsatisfactory
placement experience can affect the relationship the University has with a company. It is
important to manage student expectations, and that they are unlikely to, for example, ‘find a
cure for cancer’ whilst on their placement.
Technology needs to supplement and free their time to exercise their skills to manage
relationships, facilitate information flow and optimise learning, primarily for the student but
also employer and university staff. Knowing the exact status of the students while on
placement is a major requirement.
All of these activities contribute to the developing professionalism of placement students.
‘Many graduates need to learn basics like business etiquette – how to conduct themselves in
meetings, how to make a point without being aggressive, how to use Outlook to organise
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14. their meetings and tasks....We have 18-year-olds who work with us while studying for a
degree, and because they're with us while at college, they're picking up the basics and being
fast-tracked beyond pure graduates.’ [Fiona Moore, Head of Development at the
Nottingham-based company Experian:
http://www.insidermedia.com/insider/midlands/70104-graduates-need-smarten-business-
acumen ]
Workload allocations for placement co-ordinators need to be considered: often this is a role
undertaken by individuals in addition to their normal job. Some clarity is needed to establish
how far it is an administrative/teaching role. Both elements are important in order to give
participating students a worthwhile experience.
Balancing administrative processes with good pedagogical practice
Streamlining processes for students and staff (and employers) facilitates their being able to support
good teaching and learning. Measures to support this include:
Identifying and getting rid of unnecessary processes
Using technology to make things easier – for example utilising a unique personal identifier
makes it possible to populate a database with student profile information without having to
ask for it again; if anonymised this then allows harvesting of statistical information which can
support management decisions
Getting all the placement applications in one place (for example through Mahara) rather
than getting individual emails which have to be sorted and filed
Getting information to students in ways they are receptive to, including social networking
media such as Twitter
Academics do not always appreciate who else has impact on their students: raising profile
of non-academic staff.
Institutional Change
A challenge for all JISC projects is how to ensure outputs are taken up and developed within the
funded institution. HEIs are large and diverse, and change can be a slow, incremental process. A
great advantage for ESCAPES is that it followed on from our earlier SAMSON project, which has
enabled change to occur at a more natural rate, reducing the abrupt ‘end of project’ which can
restrict the benefits gained.
ESCAPES demonstrated the effectiveness of a ‘middle out’ approach to change. This was a mixture
of ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’, employing consultative methods, promoting ownership of new
processes for users, and using institutional networks and communities to share evidence and good
practice. Key University strategies and Grand Challenges provided a platform to introduce new
methods. Endorsement of the ePortfolio business case from the PVC-led Teaching and Learning
Board and synergy with other major institutional projects (such as the roll-out of the new Moodle
VLE) provided a cultural context in which the project was able to influence strategy and embed
change. The JISC Curriculum Design projects provided useful models for this, as did the JISC
ePortfolio Implementation Toolkit.
Rather than imposing wholesale change across the whole institution, the project supported the
principle of new developments being centrally conceived and locally delivered. This ‘hub and spoke’
approach, in which the primary focus is on the spokes, rather than the hub, helps to develop
momentum to feed back to the hub. Cumulatively, these areas of activity can start to build up a body
of institutional change. This also, however, raises potential tensions between local solutions and
central collation of management information: a centralised system makes it easier to know the
scope of activity.
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15. We hoped that our findings would be of benefit to all models in use across the University. We
recognised early on that standardised blueprints do not work at all as there are so many different
models of providing placements, whose only commonality in processes lies in a division into
activities before, during and after placement.
Further information
The project blog is at http://mahara.nottingham.ac.uk/view/view.php?id=2585
Published deliverables and a link to the video are on the project website at
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/escapes/index.shtml
Recommendations
For the Sector
The importance of the placements co-ordinator role in providing the relationship ‘glue’ with
students, academics and employers; Their knowledge about managing these relationships is
extremely valuable and needs to be shared.
Ensuring transparency for students in aligning administration of the placement (e.g. tracking,
communication) with Teaching and Learning processes. From the student point of view, they
want a streamlined and coherent experience – all parts of the process are important to
them, and both parts need to be managed together. Technical tools can make this this
combined and student-centred process more streamlined and also provide a catalyst
opportunity for changes in process.
A wider question for the sector lies in the capacity to deliver. If we are emphasising
employability, what exactly do we mean and how do we communicate this to both students
and staff?
We need to consider the wider student body, especially in the light of recent changes to visa
regulations. So this includes recruitment of international students from the UK into
international companies or companies in their home countries
Managing relationships: understanding what people are doing and why, across the
institution’s centralise services as well as academic departments
CRM needs to be extended to encompass employer engagement for student benefit
Set up a platform to develop cross-sectoral awareness around placements practice, which is
now greater than it has been. However, there is no uniform practice and no-one has all the
technology to support this on a large scale basis.
For JISC
Learning and administration are mutually exclusive and interdependent. One cannot
function effectively without the other.
Recommend joining up placement data with alumni data and destinations data to provide a
measure of the effectiveness of the contribution that placements make to improving
employability
Continue to recognise and promote the importance of joined-up data able to service
multiple functions and systems.
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