Real World Learning: stories from the coalface

At Infotecture we are always looking to explore ways that Real World Learning creates experiences to for us to grow and to reconcile our working life with who we really are.

We try to apply this approach every day, wherever we can. Not just with the students that we work with but firstly we do it to ourselves.
So we often meet and work with each other remotely because we want find out how to best get work to accommodate our lives, rather that the other way around.
This is still very much an experiment - where we learn what works best by doing it  - in the real world.
Of course, sometimes it works really badly - at those times I find that a sense of humour is pretty handy....

I love this news reader's experience - it perfectly illustrates the moment.  

Hopefully, the next time the real world wanders into your working day, you can remember this and smile.

Here's some new research data on what expect from the world of social media in 2017.
Marketing professionals overwhelmingly say that they would like to find a way to produce more Video content in cost effective ways.
This is exactly the problem that we solved in delivering the RMIT WIL System working with groups of really talented Media Communications students.

Here is Sam Lee saying a few words about that real world learning experience.

The Future of Social Media (And How to Prepare For It): The State of Social Media 2016 Report - The Buffer Blog https://t.co/uf7QDuhR9j

— Simon Finch (@Realworldlearn) November 15, 2016

Your WIL system may contain valuable research and planning data, but can you see it clearly?

The data accumulating each day in your university's WIL system may be the richest single source of industry data the university has. Granted, it's mostly low-level data which is hard to access, or to find useful patterns in. 

What kinds of questions could your WIL data help you answer, if you were able to effectively use it?

Learn more about the International relationships you already have

Many universities have made substantial investment in opening up International relationships. Revenue from International students fees is high. Relationships established in creating those markets presents opportunities for the University to partner with organisations in the countries of origin.
Could you find out which countries are already hosting the greatest number of your WIL students outside of Australia? 
It's likely to be those counties where most of of your international enrolments come from, but could you find out for sure? 
What about the companies in those countries that are hosting your WIL students. Who are they? Are they in industries your are targeting for growth or research partnerships? Are there opportunities to work directly with those companies to develop more WIL opportunities or other kinds of partnerships with the University?
If these questions matter then its worth considering that the answers could well be sitting in your WIL data today - but that doesn't mean you can necessarily find it.

Discover the depth of relationships you may already have (but can't see)

What if you decide that you want to target a particular organisation, to take on more of your WIL students.  Could you find out who else at the university already has an established relationship with that organisation?
This information will almost certainly be captured somewhere in the university's WIL system (or systems). If you were able to identify which departments, schools or colleges were already connected with an organisation that you want to work with, then you could approach your colleges to discuss your plans. You may be able to enlist their support in making an approach. 
It's true that it can be difficult to get your peers to collaborate on what they might perceive as you moving in on their contacts. Its also true that doing things this way is way better for the organisation you've targeted, who may otherwise be confused by the disparate groups contacting them from the same university. It is also better for your colleges who have established the current relationship (although they may take a little convincing of this) as a coordinated approach makes the university a more attractive partner for industry - relative to universities who don't internally cooperate.

Measure cross-program benefits from your investment in Alumni or Mentoring programs

Alumni and Mentoring programs provide the opportunity to deepen your industry partnerships. Deeper relationships can be leveraged to foster re-investment in the University by alumni - including increased opportunities for WIL. You might already be trying to achieve this. Investment in these type of programs needs to be tracked and returns that can be measured help to keep the investment flowing. 
It would be really helpful if you could use WIL data to measure return on the investments in building Alumni and Mentoring relationships.

Fish where the fish are

A lot of the time spent prospecting for more companies to host WIL placements is wasted. Staff cold calling organisations, selected more or less at random yields a very low return on the time spent. This approach is pretty common but could actually be framing the university as a 'telemarketer' of students.
Deploying WIL data you already have, alongside other strategic university data-sets such as that from Mentoring and Alumni Programs, is a step towards a much more effective approach. If you can bring in external data sets  to round out the picture, you could target organisations more likely to be responsive to participation in WIL programs. 
Some early case studies are starting to appear in the universities who are beginning to explore ways to fully exploit their WIL data. 

What is your story?

Qualified for the 21st Century?

This short piece from Clay Shirky is from around five years back but I don't see that it's theme has been picked up widely yet within the education sector. Perhaps I am wrong about that and I would love to hear from people who are doing something with this concept in education at the secondary, tertiary or even primary levels.

Its runs for about 5 minutes and he makes the key point right at the end, which is that;

Being really effective at triggering a large group response to a problem, that is loosely but successfully coordinated via social media, is a key 21st century skill.

"The individual power goes down to that one person or small group of people that can offer the plausible promise in a way that gets people not to just be aware that it's possible, but excited about it."

Impact WIL - finding the right client

This WIL story about a study tour to the Philippines for a group of of Media students is pretty fantastic.

It made me think about all of the opportunities in our own back yard that we might be overlooking when we look for work scenarios that we think will be inspiring for students.

Most of the video scenes you will see were filmed by students doing WIL on a study tour to Bohol in the Philippines. 

Dr Jenny Weight was interviewed for this short WIL-story by another couple of WIL students who were working with our WIL project team  - Samantha Lee and Adam Carroll.

We asked Sam and Adam to record their own reflections on their experiences working on the WIL Project Team - which you can check out here. 

                                         |   Sam   |   Adam   |

WIL product demonstrations for VU staff

This page is a temporary posting for the staff at Victoria University only.

We recently invited the suppliers of Sonia and of InPlace to come to VU and present their systems so that staff could see what the two tools could do first-hand. To help staff who were unable to make it to the demonstrations we have asked the Vendors to provide a copy of the presentations.
While we are waiting for an internal Project Site to be opened for us at VU, I have posted the Sonia and InPlace product demonstration videos here so you can easily review the two products that were recently presented to staff at VU.

Please note that this information is shared only for VU use at this time.

If you have any questions about either of these two products' specific capabilities, please use the comments box below to share the questions. I will follow up with the product suppliers to get answers and post them here so that other VU staff can also see the information.

Sonia

Demonstration held at Footscray Park campus on 19th April

Tip: YouTube Videos will automatically adjust to save you bandwidth so presentations like this can initially appear too small or fuzzy to see properly. You can easily correct this by clicking on the picture-frame icon at the bottom right of the Youtube window to expand the Video - then click Settings 'Cog' Icon at the bottom right of the Youtube window and choosing the highest possible setting. 

InPlace

Demonstration held at Footscray Park campus on 21st April
Note: Quantum advised that they had a problem with the recording made on the day of the demonstration - whilst they are working to rectify the file they have provided us with the following product demonstration videos (made late last year)

Student Portal

Agency Portal

Logbook

Opportunities

Thank you

Simon Finch

simon.finch@vu.edu.au

Walking the walk

This is a really great story. 
One of the hardest things for university graduates to overcome in finding their first job is that employers always want applicants with relevant experience as well as the right qualifications.
At RMIT, students are required to undertake work integrated learning, or 'WIL', prior to graduating to give them the best possible start in establishing their career. 
The university is also investing substantial effort in rolling out programs to support students in having real-world learning experiences. RMIT is currently deploying a WIL management software system to every school and discipline within the University, including its two Vietnam campuses in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi.
This ambitious project has involved a mix of professional staff, consultants, vendors, contractors bringing wide range of experience and skills together to complete the project. Collectively, this project team contained a wealth of industry experience and connections - potentially a rich opportunity for students. 
For their part, the project team were also interested in gaining better insight into the student's challenges as well as finding out more about the difficulties employers often face when presenting internship opportunities to universities.

Bringing in students work alongside the members of the project team allowed us to capture the opportunity for students whilst at the same time we gained first hand experience of the challenges for employers who run internship programs. The approach has been incredibly rewarding for everyone involved. As soon as we saw how effective it was we set ourselves a target to make up 50% of the project team with WIL students. We've been running with this mix now for the last 8 months and our focus is turning more to increasing the diversity of disciplines that we draw students from.

Andrew Sim, an RMIT Computer Science and Information Technology student, completed his WIL by working on RMIT's own WIL IT System implementation. So its a case of a WIL student doing their WIL by delivering a WIL solution. This self-reinforcing loop enabled a series of related benefits.

Watch Andrew's story

The project team benefited greatly through the deeper appreciation that they gained by working alongside students (who are end users of the system we were creating).

The university gained by keeping overall project costs lower than if we had used the standard model for a project like this, e.g. relying solely on contract staff working with consultants from the product vendor.

The product vendor gained too. To their credit, they already had a well established program for taking Interns from IT schools at local universities. What they had never experienced before was an intern who arrived at their front door on day one, knowing all about their product, how to configure, deploy and support it, as well as bringing a comprehensive knowledge of their customer's environment. It's the ideal employee really for a software development company. You know he can work in your development team, or customer support, or testing or even go out on-site with the Consulting team - because he already has!

Watch Siddesh's story

We learnt a lot about the challenges of working with students. We were very keen to gain deeper insights into this. 
A common criticism of Intern and Placement programs from employers is they find them to be too hard to bother with, or are scared off by the red-tape that gets in the way of starting. 
It turns out that actually working with students was pretty easy. Getting them started was quite challenging, in terms of the constraints of the university's practices and rules. Having done this now a few times we've learnt how to navigate through the obstacles quite easily, but it definitely didn't start that way.
International students who come to study at RMIT also have to complete work-integrated-learning. Many of these students lack local contacts or knowledge of companies they might approach here. For these students the only viable option is to return home and do their WIL there on the annual summer break. Doing WIL on campus works particularly well in this case. After their WIL experience with the WIL project, both Sokun and Siddesh have gone on to do subsequent Internships with Quantum, the Australian software company who make Inplace.
This experience working with Australian firms is highly valued and will give them a clear advantage when they return home to establish their careers there.

Watch Sokun's story

If you liked Andrew's video (did you remember to 'Like' it), or any of these stories then you should share them with your contacts in other companies and you should definitely share them with anyone who has kids approaching university age or studying at university now.

If you're wondering if this approach would only work with IT students, it doesn't. Over the last 2 years the RMIT WIL Project team has included students from Media and Communications, Landscape Architecture, Business as well from Computer Science.

So maybe you are thinking - did we actually get other WIL students to make the Videos? - You bet.
Check out Sam's Story about her experiences working the RMIT WIL Project team.