Workplace experience will complement your academic studies by providing another way of learning outside the classroom. It will also provide you with crucial knowledge, skills and personal attributes that employers look for. Indeed, in some countries such as the UK, even the brightest students find it hard to get work without having had some work experience. A degree alone is not enough. Employers are looking for more than just technical skills and knowledge of a degree discipline. They particularly value skills such as communication, team-working and problem solving. Job applicants who can demonstrate that they have developed these skills will have a real advantage." – Digby Jones: Director-General, Confederation of British Industry, Foreward to Prospects Directory 2004/5. There are a number of different types of work experience, as follows:
Shell Step (http://www.shellstep.org.uk/) is a UK-based programme which offers a range of specific project based work, for example one student on an international business degree course helped a company specialising in child safety devices break into the US market, while another worked on a rebranding exercise for an IT and communications specialist.
Benefits of work experienceThere are many benefits of work experience and we list them below, before going on to look at how some of them may form part of the learning experience.
Areas of learningAs will be clear from the above, there are many learning opportunities inherent in work experience. Broadly speaking, they can be put into the following categories. Application of academic learningWork experience offers the opportunity of applying subject specific theoretical knowledge to a real life situation. You have learnt how to apply your critical skills to journal articles, text books, case studies, lectures etc. Now you are experiencing a real life case study: how does it relate to what you have read? Can you draw from your reading suggestions for improvement? Does it make you see the literature and theoretical background differently? Does it make you want to go back and re-read the literature, perhaps exploring other authors? You may be applying a particular technical skill which you learnt at college: Are your skills at the right standard? How does what you are required to do differ from what you learnt? Are you using the same equipment and techniques? You should not automatically assume that what you do in the workplace is right and what you learnt at college is wrong: workplace practice differs and there may be no one right way; you need to reflect on the differences and what you can learn from other ways of doing things. One particular way in which you can apply your workplace practice to your academic learning is if you have to write a final year project or dissertation. Whether you are doing a specifically vocational degree or a more general one in business studies, you will need a project with a strong practical application, and you may find that a particular company project can be the basis for your dissertation. That way you will not only achieve an academic goal but also help the company concerned. Employability skillsA good period of work experience will greatly increase the knowledge, personal attributes and skills that will make employers want to employ you, including:
Professional developmentA specific work placement is a chance to gain more insight into your chosen field. You will be exposed to modern techniques and industry practices. You will also have a chance to gain more insight into an area of work that attracted you – is it really all you have imagined? Would you like to work in this type of organisation or this corner of your chosen field, or do you want to get more experience somewhere else? Remember too that through the workplace there will be access to professional associations, and you should try to get to their meetings. An important lesson is how to network, which will prove invaluable not only in getting your first job but also throughout your career. Study opportunities not only in your organisation but also through meetings with clients, and professional organisations as mentioned above. Personal developmentWork experience provides an important opportunity to grow personally. If you can achieve some of the employability skills listed above, as well as greater awareness of your chosen area, you will become more self disciplined and self confident. Having to subject yourself to the rigours and responsibilities of the workplace as opposed to the peace of the library and lecture room, you will become more mature. Teachers on industry-linked sandwich courses comment on how the students they say goodbye to at the end of the second year are not the same ones that come back at the beginning of the fourth year! Ways of ensuring learningWhether or not your work placement is a success depends upon you, your employer and your higher education institute (HEI). If the work experience is part of a course, the HEI will probably have negotiated the placement with the employer, and will help you prepare your CV and look for a suitable placement. This can help make the experience a quality one, and ensure that the employment tasks can be structured around specific learning outcomes, which you as the student should be aware of. The employer in turn needs to be aware that they are not just employing someone who can answer the phone and do photocopying, but who will undertake particular projects and who is working to specific outcomes. Preparing and supporting the learnerYour tutor should brief you not only on learning outcomes, but also on the particular style of learning that you need to adopt (see below). He or she should also support you throughout the process, visiting you at the workplace and helping you to understand how your learning relates to your goals (these visits may or may not be part of a formal assessment). The close of the work experience should also be marked by a debriefing to help you reflect on whether or not the goals have been achieved. Becoming a reflective learnerYou will also need to adapt to learning in a situation where the learning objectives are not always made explicit, in contrast to a class or lecture where these are normally articulated. Reflective learning is the conscious process of analysing and learning from what one has done or is doing, and is shown in the ability to:
You will also need to examine yourself critically and see yourself as an employer would, using the same critical thinking skills you should have acquired in reading texts. This means identifying your own strengths and weaknesses, including areas for improvement. Students studying for degrees in the Department of Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management at Oxford Brookes University in the UK frequently do a work placement. This has specific learning outcomes relating to knowledge and understanding, personal development, and the development of skills associated with learning at work. The knowledge and understanding is articulated in specific questions, such as What are the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses, and how can the company be improved? What is the organisation doing to encourage cultural diversity? Students undertake a small project, and need to relate the question to academic theory. Students are expected to use the placement as an opportunity for self development and need to develop reflective thinking skills, reflecting on situations and relating them to theory. There are documented appraisals at several points of the placement, culminating in an essay which describes how they have changed and what management skills they have acquired. They are also expected to negotiate learning agreements with their employer, relating to small bundles of learning about particular management issues. DocumentationYou will find it easier to analyse what you have learnt if you keep a written record. If a work placement is part of your course there will probably be particular requirements, in the form of:
Students at Oxford Brookes are required to keep a reflective log, in which they put notes about any learning which relates to knowledge and understanding or personal development. Students studying on a graphic media degree at a further education college in the UK were required to produce a report at the end of their placement profiling the company and their job within it, describing their learning and what they gained from the experience. To aid them complete the report, they had to keep a log book. Whether or not your degree has a specific requirement, keeping some sort of daily record of what you have done, with associated learning and evidence, is useful. It can be in the form of a log, etc., and will help you produce written course work as well as articulate your skills for future employers. |