by: Dianne van Eck
Placements are hard work! There is no denying this from anyone working in this space in higher education. The supply and demand pressures are huge – there are never enough sites or providers. Students are expecting more of their placements – the government will soon be paying some students to go on placement. Staff are undertaking complex, often manual work, despite their system solutions. It is a relentless, annual cycle that is now almost always devoid of downtime.
The usual accredited placements of nursing, midwifery, health, medicine, dentistry, vet science, education and engineering have been included in curriculum for many years. More recently other disciplines have been offering either voluntary or mandated placements or internships including business, law, arts and the sciences.
DVE has been delivering projects focused on improving placement and Work Integrated Learning (WIL) management for over 17 years. From developing our own niche clinical placement management system (CPMS) in 2012 which manages regional and rural students on health placements in four universities (University of Adelaide, UniSA, University of Sydney and Flinders University), we have reviewed and improved placement business processes, undertaken benchmarking, visited a UK University region, delivered webinars and presented at conferences. DVE has worked with many Australian universities to improve this essential and critical activity.
Interestingly, the findings delivered by Director and Higher Education Specialist, Dianne van Eck at the NAFEA (National Association of Field Experience Administrators) Conference in 2014 are still very much relevant today:
- Many manual and complex processes
- Varying discipline requirements
- Student’s special circumstances
- Managing accommodation and travel
- Managing facilitators/supervisors
- Increasing demand
- Decreasing supply
- Complex information management
You can all relate to at least one of these issues!
Working on a current education placement project highlighted a gap where teams could share issues, risks, and find best practice amongst each other across the sector. NAFEA provides one avenue for this, but we thought a Community of Practice (CoP) could also be useful for staff from any and all universities.
Last month we decided to give this idea a whirl and we reached out to people who had attended one or both of our placement webinars and asked if they would be interested in joining a CoP. Many people responded from various disciplines stating emphatically ‘yes’. We organised the first CoP to discuss education placements several weeks ago.
The hour-long discussion, facilitated by DVE, focused on each university representative stating their current situation, challenges and frustrations. Several issues were relevant to all: insufficient supervisors, placement staff turnover, increasing student numbers causing greater pressures on supply; leading days; unpaid placements and advanced standing.
Feedback indicated that the sharing of these pain points and frustrations, as well as the learning from how other institutions have solved some of these was helpful. Attendees want to meet again and discuss other matters as well.
Our next CoP discussion will focus on health placements and then possibly a third will focus on other disciplines. The Education CoP will continue to meet. If you are interested in attending any CoPs please contact Dianne van Eck on 0412 417774.
