All Schools have dedicated space to support employability, for example School of Nursing and Midwifery has a simulation lab and the School of Science has a WIL lab.
Located in the central Wanneroo business district, the ECU health Centre is a state of the art primary healthcare facility where a wide range of health service providers offer an integrated one stop shop for patients, their families and carers, and those looking to improve wellbeing.
The ECU Health Centre provides both research and clinical training opportunities to ECU students across a range of disciplines. Since September 2014, approximately 37,000 clinical training hours have been completed by ECU students from School of Nursing and Midwifery, School of Medical and Health Sciences and School of Arts and Humanities in the disciplines of nursing, midwifery, para-medicine, exercise physiology and psychology. Placement opportunities have also been provided to students from ECU's School of Business and Law: Overview http://www.ecu.edu.au/ecu-health-centre/overview
The Northern Suburbs Community Legal Centre Inc, in Perth, is a non-profit community legal service that was established in 1996. Their vision is that disadvantaged and low income earners have access to legal services. The organisation has a partnership with the Edith Cowan University School of Law where they operate a law student placement program. In addition to these services the organisation offers free community legal education to indigenous groups and newly arrived migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds. The Edith Cowan University Psychological Services Centre is a modern training facility that provides services to the community. Clinical Psychology Trainees provide current, evidence-based psychological services under the direct supervision of experienced and professionally registered Clinical Psychologists.
Yes, a dedicated physical space for the WIL Office is now available.
ICMS has a dedicated WIL Office, an office which leads employability and includes WIL Manager (1), WIL Placement Facilitators (4), WIL Assessment Facilitator (1) and an Administrator (1). Recently, a dedicated WIL Office, with student meeting room and signage, has been actioned. There are also plans to replace the existing WIL noticeboards around campus with screens.
The upgrade of IT systems is underway to support an on-line teaching and learning strategy. As ICMS continues to grow student numbers, the use of technology (zoom for student consultations, on-line modules for career planning content) is being planned to ensure scalability of employability activities.
With a city campus (in addition to Manly), WIL has contributed to the campus equity strategy to ensure a staffing presence in the city campus in regards to preparation workshops and student consultations.
The following examples of infrastructure have been included as spaces where a range of student activities take place that have the potential to indirectly benefit student employability.
The focus over the past four years has been on developing an employability framework based on best practice. This has developed into Kahurei but has yet to be finalised and officially adopted by the University.
The University recently opened a new space called the Launchpad, which is described as a space for free-thinkers to connect, collaborate and co-creates and as a gateway for business and industry to connect with creative minds. The space hosts a wide range of events and workshops, houses the Careers and WIL team in an adjoining staff area, provides access to a range of technologies such as a 3D printer, and has an Entrepreneur in Residence for 4 days a week.
SAE's facilities are designed to mirror contemporary industry hardware and software. This is outlined in the Institute's Learning Environment Policy and is supported in implementation by the Executive management Group.
In 2017 Swinburne University brought its Innovation Precinct headquarters to life in a space dedicated to supporting entrepreneurial activity at the university commonly called The Fire Station. The Fire Station houses a business incubator and acceleration program; an entrepreneur-in-residence; IP clinic; coworking, prototyping and collaboration spaces.
The Design Factory Melbourne assists an industry partner bring a real business challenge to the students and research mentors who will live and breathe the project until a proof of concept innovation is delivered. The collaboration allows for industry to gain the relevant research and methods they require and provide the students with an introduction to a potential organisation within their industry discipline allowing them to sample working in that environment and the advantage of establishing relationships with key players.
The SwinEmploy as noted in 1.9 provides another style of infrastructure which relates to student employability, as it provides access to a large jobs board across multiple industry disciplines and links to an Employer search functionality. The students can book appointments with careers staff, attend workshops, conferences and seminars and learn how to write job applications, resumes and selection criteria.
In December 2017, funding to support implementation of the Student Strategy funding package was approved. In February 2018, the Vice Chancellors Committee endorsed the Enhanced Employability Initiative as an investment priority for 2018. The Enhancing Employability Blueprint was developed to provide an overview of funding distribution for the initiative and ensure that the following initiatives could be delivered:
- Discipline-specific CDL and WIL approaches and services, delivered locally and flexibly to complement discipline-specific teams in Faculties via a collaborative (or embedded) service model (hub-spoke structure);
- Expansion of short-term global employability (mobility) experiences, to widen opportunity for all students.
Funding was also provided to support the implementation of a range of Students as Partners initiatives, that would develop the student experience at UQ as well as enhancing the employability of student engaged in these projects. This investment was provided both centrally and at Faculty level, creating an embedded model that included:
- A centralised team of Work Integrated Learning Advisers and Career Development Learning Advisers who are deployed within Faculties;
- Faculty based Employability Teams to deliver activities that maximise student employability development and provide discipline specific support and advice to students;
- Additional central staff within the Student Employability Centre to facilitate the development and management of extra-curricular activities including global internships, domestic internships, and student-staff partnerships;
Implementation of this embedded collaborative model of for the delivery of employability is managed through Collaborative Agreements to ensure that discipline specific needs can be met while ensuring a consistency of student experience across a comprehensive institution. This model also facilitates connection and sharing of ideas and best practice across a three campuses and over 52,000 students in 6 Faculties.
The Program Architecture review (https://student-strategy.uq.edu.au/program-architecture commenced in mid 2018 and is tasked with reviewing and simplifying program structures and teaching-related policies and procedures. This project will enable employability initiatives such as Work Integrated Learning, Global experiences, Entrepreneurship and Career Development Learning to be more easily integrated into degree programs.
o Child and Youth Occupational Therapy Clinic
o Mobile Health Clinic
o Nutrition and Dietetics Clinic
o USC Arthritis Clinic
o USC Psychology Clinic
o USC Sport Clinic
o Weight Management Clinic
o Wound Solutions Clinic
Evidence:
2.9a University companies webpage
2.9b Sunshine Coast Health Institute webpage
a. As part of VU's Transformational Agenda, all HE courses are being redesigned so that they can be delivered in an intensive block mode model. To provide academic and careers support to students in this model, Learning Hubs were created in 2018 as physical and virtual spaces at each campus. In particular, Learning Coordinators (Careers) work with students and staff to deliver a range of career-related services such as drop-ins, workshops and lectures. Learning Hub also provides an online platform with a plethora of career resources, job boards, career tools, activities and advice. Students have access to 24-hour careers and academic support through VU's partnership with Smarthinking. Learning Hubs also play a crucial role in the new model as they support the redesign of curriculum by offering a range of complementary activities that are conducted on a co-curricular basis.
b. Victoria University has a very long standing and robust Students as Staff program which employs some 400-600 students in staff roles across the organisation. This initiative was introduced in 2010 based on evidence that students who are working in their final year are more likely to be working when they graduate. The Students of staff program sees students working in a range of roles across the organisation including student services, library, research, ambassador programs and student academic and transition mentoring.
c. VU Extra Transcript is an official document of Victoria University showing student extracurricular and voluntary activity in approved programs. This initiative was introduced to document student engagement beyond the curriculum in response to industry feedback that they were looking for much more than a completed degree when selecting graduates.
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Supporting documents:
VU Transformational Agenda
VU Students as Staff
Curtin University aspires to provide students with engaging and motivating real-world learning experiences that equip them with employability skills and career aspirations required to navigate the unpredictable workplace of the future. A learning environment that delivers on this mandate is characterized by quality learning and teaching, learning experiences that reflect industry currency, industry/community partnerships, and a streamlined governance process that assures the safety and well-being of all participants. This philosophy is reflected in Curtin University's Strategic Plan and operational plans designed to enact the strategic directions of the University. There is overall consensus that employability is important with endorsement from Heads of School, academic and professional staff, and executive leaders. However, infrastructure to facilitate institution-wide implementation of employability development has yet to be operationalised.
No, but UWA is exploring Work Integrated Learning through the WIL Strategy Working Group - a central reference group made up of key stakeholders to discuss and give recommendations on how employability is to be rolled out at an institutional level.
The University is also engaging an external consultant to benchmark placement processes for non-compulsory WIL units in the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law, and Education, Faculty of Science, and the Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences (the Engineering professional practicum is a compulsory unit that is not for credit). It is anticipated that the consultant will deliver on:
1. a final report identifying the current state of placements at UWA
2. a comparative benchmarking report, comparing the University of Western Australia with five other universities, and present a series of recommendations for a placement process
3. a final report on three business model options and recommendations
Furthermore, the University has recently signed an agreement with the CCIWA to sit four placement officers to support the placement of students with CCI member organisations and other industry hosts. This contract has been signed for the duration of one year.
The Office of Employability and Graduate Success are moving to change the organisational structure to align to the newly developed Employability strategy. An investment is being made into the creation of a digital dashboard / e-Portfolio to map various forms of graduate capital. An investment is being made to data provision CareerHub and use it as the central place for online Employability learning and opportunities
Not currently
No
Not at this stage
Not applicable