Assessment of Industrial Placements

This page describes the assessment requirements for students who are undertaking placements with the School of Computing.

You are expected to do two things:

1. Keep a log of your experiences on placement. Most people use a day notebook for this, but you are also welcome to set up a blog, which has the advantage that you can make this available to your mentor and the placement tutor.
2. Submit a portfolio, which will be largely based on the diary you keep.

The assessment is based on the portfolio, rather than the log itself. You need to keep a log or diary in order to construct your portfolio, but it is the portfolio which we read in order to decide whether you pass or fail. We also take into account evidence from any visits you have had, and a reference from your employer. The expectation is that anyone who can complete a placement successfully will pass the assessment, and we will provide advice on a draft of the portfolio to ensure that it meets the required standard.

How to keep the log and prepare for the portfolio

What's the log for?

• to help you learn from your placement experiences
• to help you construct the portfolio
• to help the School keep in touch with its placement students

How is the log organized?

The log is divided into seven skill areas which come from the criteria which the portfolio is based around. Each of the seven skill areas which you need to demonstrate in the portfolio is subdivided into four or six more specific skills. There are 40 of these specific skills altogether, but these 40 bullet points in the list do not appear explicitly in the online log. The log allows you to make a number of entries for each of the skill areas.

How much should I write?

The target is to find some evidence for each one of the 40 bullet points in the list. Each entry that you make may contribute to several of these points, pand you may find that you have several pieces of evidence for some of the points. If you find it hard to get evidence for some of the points, do ask your mentor for advice. In some placements not all of the 40 points will be applicable.

Here is an example of an entry you might make (within the "Working With and Relating to Others" skill area). You might need to include more background in the details, remember that your mentor and the markers of your portfolio will not be as familiar with your work as you are.

Outline When holding a meeting regarding the movement of a server from one network to another, the two parties involved: the owners of the application, and the support staff responsible for the server were having problems reaching agreement. As I was chairing the meeting I had to use my facilitation skills to resolve the issue. Dates meeting: 27/01/03 Relevant to avoid conflict and co-operate with others to overcome difficulties appreciate the role and function of others I am working with

Details As a member of the support team, I had a good understanding of their side of the issue. The application owners were worried that not enough testing had taken place, whilst the assurances from the support team were based on technical facts that the application owners did not fully understand. Therefore I got the application owners to create a list of their concerns which was then given to the support team to go away with. Another meeting was scheduled for the next day for which the support team would have created a document answering the owner’s concerns. We as the support team spent the rest of the afternoon together preparing the document, being careful to avoid jargon and difficult technical concepts. At the next day’s meeting, I asked John, my supervisor and member of the support team to present the document. As each concern was answered I fielded questions from the users, and then asked the relevant member of the support team to answer.

Evidence agenda for the meeting (paper copy) list of concerns from application owners (paper copy) support team document (electronic version at xxx.xxx/yyy, paper copy too)

What additional evidence should I keep?

you should also collect other evidence beyond what you write yourself in the log. In addition to your own personal views, it will be useful to collect other forms of evidence, such as internal reviews or appraisals (if the organization where you are placed does these), emails, and products of your placement (software, reports, manuals) which show your skills development. You should not of course keep anything which may be confidential to your employer - if in doubt make sure you ask. File space is provided in the Nathan Bodington building where you can put electronic documents and link them to your log. In many cases it may be more convenient to keep paper copies, in this case you could keep a list of evidence and make references to it in the log.

How often should I make an entry? How much time should it take?

We expect you to add to the log at very least once a month, but every one or two weeks would be a better routine to aim for. If you make entries every week, about half an hour a week would be a reasonable amount of time to take.

 

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