ESCAPES: Improving the student work placement experience Sandra Winfield and Kirstie Coolin, Centre for International ePortfolio Development, University of Nottingham AGCAS Biennial, 13 September 2011

Our mission Centre for International ePortfolio Development projects aim to maximise the efficiency of information flow, supporting educational stakeholders to access seamless ICT services and quality information

What we do Centre projects focus on: Technology for delivery of practical, workable solutions Improving user experience Streamlining access to and use of appropriate data Meeting national and regional strategic and policy agendas Opening up routes of opportunity and improving progression to HE, employment and Lifelong Learning

ESCAPES Enhancing Student Centred Administration for Placement ExperienceS Funded by JISC 18 months, March 2011-Aug 2012 Part of Relationship Management programme, 16 projects across 3 strands looking at various stages of student lifecycle (and alumni) from the student point of view

Project aims To blueprint a placements service and implement and analyse targeted changes to improve the student experience of institutionally-managed placements To maximise student satisfaction in the placement experience as a significant contribution to their career progression Build on foundations laid by the CIePD SAMSON project

Project activities Develop an iterative blueprint covering the main stages of the placement lifecycle Identify, prioritise and address ‘fail’ and ‘wait’ points Carry out agile co-developments to explore how lightweight, modular technology might help Run pilots to demonstrate changed processes and use of technology Evaluate impact on the student experience Test for transferability and develop an ongoing service enhancement plan Consult from an early stage with experts in the wider community

Basic principles Student viewpoint is central: students inform process analysis, which then informs technical and procedural interventions Focus on one model: institutionally-sourced and managed placements in the open market (i.e. students don’t have to find their own placements, but are not allocated to fixed placements in a tightly-controlled environment) Establish a baseline, then the process is iterative, from ‘as is’ to ‘to be’ Continuous consultation with national professional organisations

The Nottingham situation Many flavours of work placement: no apparent consistency across the University, but there is an appetite for students to undertake placements Newly formed Placements Forum, sharing good practice Looking at how to manage data in a joined-up way Create good practice guidelines and inform policy

Introducing service thinking Tangible beginning and end Made up of series of processes Each process can be broken down into tasks Involves variety of actors Supported by a number of systems

What is a 'Process'? ‘If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.’ W E Deming ‘… a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.’ The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998)

Service Design and blueprinting Developed in the 1980s to plan cost and revenue for service operation: now used in development and to monitor day-to-day operation Combines customer and Service Provider views ‘Spiral model’, supports iterative development Allows complex service processes to be broken down into stages and improved Graphical process Identifies fail points and areas of excessive wait to focus improvement effort Student experience viewed holistically, rather than concentrating on individual processes Living document, should be continually refined

6 steps to blueprinting… Identify service process Identify customers who experience the service Picture service from customer perspective Picture actions of contact employee and/or technology Link contact activities to support functions Add evidence of service for every customer action step

… gives 5 components Customer actions Visible contact employee actions Invisible (backstage) employee actions Support processes Physical evidence

Hotel service example Taken from

Our journey so far…. Placements Forum consultation Workshops with students who have just finished placements Developing initial maps… …making small improvements as we go

Thank you!

Over to you… Groups of 4-6 Think about your own processes. How are placements organised in your institution? Pick one model Try to see yourself as ‘customer’. What do you think are most important for students – Pre-placement – During placement – Post placement? Have a go at some mapping!