Preparing students for professional practice: Strategies for evaluating work integrated learning within an industry professional context

In line with an evolving profile of the university graduate, learning and teaching strategies are changing as one contemporary view of education is to prepare students for effective participation in professional practice. At one Australian university the distance between the classroom and the professional community is closing. In the university’s on-campus student advertising agency, students learn to apply best industry practice to a range of real-world advertising and communication problems within an authentic working environment. Curriculum development and pedagogy have been informed by academic research and continuous industry dialogue, and are based on the belief that university courses should not simply serve industry, they should contribute on a higher level new knowledge that informs and even guides evolving professional practice and citizenship. This paper, a case study and the subject of a successful ALTC Citation, reports on the outcomes of a quantitative research study undertaken to evaluate learning and teaching strategies employed within the environment of the student advertising agency. Specifi cally, the effectiveness of models that embrace the concept of work-integrated learning via constructs such as communities of practice and authentic problem-based learning. Models that foster accountable relationship with clients and communities, as students learn not only the aspects of advertising creation but also how they, as young practitioners, can add value to their community and to society. In the process the paper seeks to identify pedagogical practices that successfully connect learning to authentic activity, context, and culture, as employed in both curriculum delivery and in the evaluation of student learning