Enhancing Student Centred Administration for Placement ExperienceS Case Study

Student employability is high on the UK Higher Education agenda, and there is growing recognition nationally of the role that work placements can play in helping students to consolidate their technical skills and develop the ‘soft’ skills that employers value when recruiting. Placement activity is therefore a key area which could benefit from improvements in relationship management. To support this agenda within the University of Nottingham, ESCAPES aimed ‘to maximise both student satisfaction and administrative efficiency in the placement experience and to make a significant contribution to students’ readiness for career progression’ through applying service design techniques to a placements service, implementing changes, and then monitoring impact. Selected student-centred placement processes were investigated and refined to demonstrate a model of good practice, using appropriate technology, to support students’ experience of the placement from preparation through to conclusion. Working closely with three areas working on placements, improvements in processes were identified from the student viewpoint and executed through improvements to placement administration software and workflow together with learning and teaching activities using the Mahara ePortfolio system. These improvements were documented to inform central University placements activity, with the long-term aim of developing further tools and methods to make provision of placements more straightforward for the University. This will in turn improve provision for an increased level of placement activity in the light of anticipated rise in demand from students seeking to improve their employability