Transitioning undergraduate students from law, business, and creative arts towards work integrated learning capstone experiences

The Faculty of Law, Business and Creative Arts at JCU offers undergraduate degrees at each of its campuses in Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane and Singapore. To date, each campus / degree has offered a diverse range of work-integrated learning (WIL) components and practices, causing issues for both students and academics in terms of sequential integration and consistency of practice. The challenge has been to design a wholly integrated WIL program that can be implemented across all locations, taking into account contextual issues relevant to each campus and degree. The new faculty WIL program includes a scaffolded approach within each degree, at both foundational and developmental levels to maximise preparedness for common advanced WIL capstone experiences. At the capstone level all students choose from one of three final year units, each requiring them to identify meaningful and sustainable outcomes and solutions to the challenges inherent to an increasingly complex and globalized society. This paper will discuss the development, challenges, implementation and feedback strategies involved in designing a WIL framework to cater to a diverse student body