One of the key employability aims I have for the courses and modules that I’m responsible for is to allow students the greatest possible chance to obtain a high quality career within the Computing discipline. I particularly favour encouraging students to take an industrial sandwich year placement, to build up work experience and to capture valuable contacts within employment.
Finding out how well universities and higher education institutions across the UK are doing to help students with their placement experience has been a key part of the “Improving Industrial Sandwich Year Placements” research that I’ve been involved with. This talk summarises some of the main findings.
The presentation took place at the Embracing Employability Through Placements In Higher Education Conference, held at the University of Huddersfield. The slides, hosted on SlideShare account for Thomas Lancaster, are included here.
Whilst many of the findings should not come as a great surprise, it is the good practice going on across the sector that most stands out to me. Some of the innovations, such as peer support of placement students, and providing internal opportunities for employment and to develop entrepreneurial skills, are ones that we should be focusing on across the sector.