Grounding learning in authentic contexts and experiences is vital to enabling students to form meaningful connections between their university learning and their current and future lives and careers. While making the learning experience authentic is relatively easy for more vocational provision, other courses will employ authentic learning when focusing on the development of students' graduate attributes and personal development. Wherever possible, course delivery should incorporate material and active learning activity that enables students to form these meaningful connections.
The Learning, teaching and assessment strategy encourages the inclusion of relevant work-based or placement learning in courses, and many courses do this. For some provision, placements are a necessary element of all students' learning experience, particularly for professionally accredited courses. All Foundation degrees must include at least 40 credits worth of placement or work-based learning. For other undergraduate courses, placements can be included in mandatory or optional elements of the curriculum (either within the three year module structure or within a placement year, creating a four year honours degree).
Where courses include mandatory or optional work placement opportunities, these are provided in line with the University’s Work-based and Placement Learning Framework. Placement and work based learning form an integral part of students’ learning experiences, with students being encouraged to make and share reflections on links between theoretical perspectives, skills development and work experience.
Where in-curricular placement or work-based learning opportunities are limited, course teams should promote and facilitate extra-curricular opportunities such as placements, internships, and employer or alumni mentoring to enable students to gain experience of work and professional activity.
Course Team Guidance
The design and management of placements and work-based learning opportunities, and of any associated assessment components, is a significant area of work and will need careful thought and consideration. Details of how placements and work based learning will be managed, and how students engaging with these opportunities will be supported, will need to be documented through the provision of a placement/work-based learning handbook for students, often accompanied with a further handbook for employers or employer mentors.
Vocational courses that include placements as an integral portion of their provision will often need to design their curriculum around the needs, and planned student learning experiences of, their placements.
Where courses include placements as a significant part of their provision they will need to work closely with placement providers in ensuring that their curricula will enable students to access, engage with, learn from, and flourish within their placement environment (see the section on Placement providers in the stakeholders section of this blueprint for further discussion).
The University encourages all course teams to include some type of work experience or work based learning within their courses, and the inclusion of placement opportunities is one means by which many courses achieve this in a meaningful manner. However, including a placement in a course needs careful consideration and the following questions are worth considering as teams explore the inclusion of placement opportunities in their curricula:
When exploring how students can gain placement and work-based learning opportunities, course teams will need to consider the barriers that particular approaches may incur on some students:
Exemplary | Accomplished (Baseline) | Promising | Incomplete |
Expending on the authentic scenarios and problems integrated into the curriculum, students are expected to regularly source and share authentic, often personal, examples of cases and learning within course delivery, enriching their peers’ and tutors’ learning and development.
Where appropriate to the course aims and outcomes, the course seeks to create a learning environment within which relevant professional values and working methods are replicated.
External stakeholders such as employers and service users are an integral part of the course’s learning community, contributing to and challenging students’ learning and assessment across much of the programme.
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There is extensive use of authentic scenarios, case studies and problems to enrich planned learning activity and assessment throughout the course, and students have opportunities to provide their own examples for discussion and to use within assessment tasks. The course integrates many opportunities for students to interact constructively with external stakeholders as part of planned learning activity. Students have opportunities to work with or for employers in the completion of graduate level activity pertinent to their specialist subject. Opportunities for work-based or placement learning are taken up by the majority of students and are integral to the overall curriculum. |
Many modules employ authentic case studies or problems in delivery and there is occasional use within assessment activity. Interaction with external stakeholders is integral to the students’ planned learning experience within elements of the course. Opportunities for work-based or placement learning are included in the curriculum and form a effective link between taught content and practice. |
Scenarios and examples from practice, employment, or other pertinent contexts are included in the delivery and assessment of some modules. The course facilitates opportunities for the students to interact with relevant external stakeholders such as employers or service users. Placement or work-based learning opportunities are promoted and facilitated within the course. |