Planning Placements for Work Related Learning

• Start small and local – perhaps with organisations that you have already worked with on teaching or research activities. It’s important that you trust them to develop meaningful activities for work related learning students and that they trust you to send them students that will be reliable and committed to the experience.

• Use word of mouth – ask established partners to recommend other organisations who might be interested in working with you. 

• Think about the possibilities within your own organisation – one of our most committed partners has come from within the University’s own administrative departments. Such departments are likely to welcome an opportunity to access student perspectives on their work, and to be able to absorb larger numbers than local small or medium enterprise employers. See our case studies of successful internal placements here.

• Look at the possibility of working with non-employer partners: charitable organisations and voluntary groups. Take a look at the Externality Partnership Project (EPP) model developed at York St John which enables students to gain experience of work opportunities in harder to access sectors such as heritage, charities and fund-raising.

• Talk, talk, talk – make sure you and the employer partner have a really clear idea about the activities to be undertaken during the placement. What activities will be undertaken, and what skills will be developed? How will progress be reviewed? Your conversations should result in a full role profile, containing details of the placement, skills sought and skills to be developed, plus a draft agreement for completion by both employer and placement student which sets out the process and timings of reviews of progress. Example role profiles and placement agreements can be accessed on the Resources page.

• Does the employer have a particular goal in mind for the work related learning placement? A specific project or goal will help ensure that the student is engaged in meaningful activity and has the opportunity to test and develop skills; they will also have something specific to discuss in future interviews with prospective employers.

• In small organisations, in particular, the employer is more likely to be willing to take on a student if there is a specific project for them to work on. Take a look at our case study of the very successful project with New Perspectives Theatre Company.

• Keep on talking. Both you and your employer host will both have many demands on your time, but try and make space for a chat towards the end of the placement; what worked, and what didn't? What might they do differently next time? Capture advice for future employers and share that knowledge to pre-empt problems arising. For example one employer mentor said that she would not schedule placement students on a Monday again, as it meant the start of her week was always slightly disrupted: a small change, but a key one in terms of maintaining goodwill!

• What does your institution require of you in terms of checking health and safety arrangements and assessing risk? We have developed a review form to be completed for each placement, and ask each employer to confirm arrangements in writing. Sample skeleton documents on the Resources page are available for you to adapt. You will need to visit each employer before signing off on this aspect of the placement. 

• Start risk assessment discussions as soon as you can in the placement planning process in order to identify if there are particular risks, or requirements, for placements which might affect timing or success? If students need DBS (formerly CRB) checks, for example, then the recruitment process will need to begin earlier than if they are working within an office environment. 

• How easy will it be for the student to travel to the work related learning placement? Work related learning placements are usually unpaid – but there may be resources available within the host organisation to fund travel expenses. Or are there funds available within your institution to support placement activity? Fantastic employers may just not be accessible by your students: be realistic about the time they have available and how far they can travel.

• Are there particular risks, or requirements for placements, which might affect timing or success? If students need CRB checks, for example, then the recruitment process will need to begin earlier on than if they are working within an office environment.

The ‘Embedding Employability in English’ project had a three way partnership between students, employers and academics at its core, and was developed on the basis of focus groups and individual discussions with all involved. The majority of feedback from our student focus groups suggested that our students did not want placement activity embedded within a module on their degree for two key reasons:

• Study of the discipline was key to their time at Nottingham and with only six modules a year (or three for joint honours students) they wanted to focus learning on ‘academic’ English
• They felt that placement activity beyond the curriculum was likely to mark out their CV as more impressive than 'compulsory' or embedded placements.

Students at your institution may take a different view: the Aiming University Learning@Work project makes the case for embedding (Pdf). In considering what is best for your environment, questions you might consider are:

• Will your HEI provide resources to support placement activity if it is not embedded within the curriculum? Will off-curriculum activity be recognised within any workload model?
• How can you be sure that the opportunity is open to all: will students who already work part-time be able to fit in placement work in addition alongside their formal learning?
• How can you ensure reflection and learning from the placement? See the section on embedding reflection below.

If your work related learning activity is embedded within the taught curriculum then it will be easier for you to require the students to reflect on their experiences. We have tried different approaches:

• Encouraging students to undertake a self-evaluative skills audit (Doc) before beginning their placement. In the second phase of placements, students are now being asked to take these for discussion with employers at their initial induction meeting; they will then be encouraged to reflect on identified areas for development as the placement progresses.
• using the Mahara ePortfolio. Mahara is open source software which is free to use; your HEI may have access to this, or be using a different ePortfolio system. If it is not already something that students are familiar with you will need to invest time in teaching students how to use the system, and give them incentives to do so, perhaps by sharing the reflections with their host employers. Take a look at some of the examples of reflection through the Mahara ePortfolio.

• Can employers build in reflective activity as part of the placement day? A weekly blog from the student will give the employer publicity material and the student experience of writing for the public, but might not result in the critical self-reflection you may be seeking. This page provides a great example of an employer-prompted blog.

• We ran regular discussion groups with our placement students to share learning experiences and to encourage take up of Mahara through sharing some of the reflective material posted there.

• Moving forwards we will be clearer about the commitment to these activities in our initial agreements with students and employers: but the best way to secure engagement with this activity is to make it matter within the context of the placement.

Small changes to the curriculum can support development of employability skills:

• Are there opportunities to add employability activities and discussion of key skills to transition modules? For example, our first year Academic Community module now includes talks by Careers and Employability staff and requires students to design outreach projects which take ‘applied English’ beyond the context of their academic learning.

• How can your diet of assessment support key skills such as independent research, oral communication, project management? Think about embedding learning activities which enable students to practice and develop key skills. This might involve building in progression in employability skills development across the years of the degree: what skills and knowledge might students need in order to access particular placement opportunities?

• Could third year dissertation projects be used to develop employability skills? We have developed a number of project-based dissertations with partner organisations where students work with them on a particular project before writing a dissertation which develops a critical framework through which to discuss their observation and practice. For a range of similar projects, take a look at the HEA NTF funded project, Rethinking Final Year Projects and Dissertations: Creative Honours and Capstone Projects, based at the University of Gloucestershire.

• Articulate the ways in which employability is embedded within the wider curriculum. Our annual module fairs badge existing modules by using the Ceth Employability Framework (© Helen Day) buttons to identify the key employability skills developed in each module (Pdf).