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Work Experience: Building Skills and Unlocking Opportunities

Module description

“Work Experience” is an exciting, interdisciplinary module that, through a 35-hour work placement, will enable you to understand how your degree and discipline are relevant to the professional job market. The module is unique in combining research-enriched learning with practical, employment experience. Through its workshops and seminars, the module will allow you to identify and articulate your skills, knowledge, and experience to potential employers and it will offer you, via the placement, the opportunity to acquire first-hand understanding of an industry sector that you are interested in. You will build confidence in yourself and in the value of your degree, and you will be able to translate academic experiences into employment-related strengths and skills outside the university.

Many employers are looking for previous work experience to have been undertaken by candidates applying for their roles as they can demonstrate their understanding of, and make a quicker transition into, the workplace. Work experience can make you stand out as you progress into the graduate recruitment market.

As a third year, you are expected to practice these skills at a high level as this is a key time for you to develop relevant employability and workplace skills/experience before you graduate in the coming months.

You will be required to find and secure your own placements but will have help from the Placements team to support you in creating effective CVs and written applications, and to successfully navigate interviews. You will work in an agreed professional setting that develops your employability and workplace skills, and will reflect on that experience within the context of the module's assessment.

It is your responsibility to keep the Module Convenor and Employability and Placement Advisor informed of progress in the workplace and of problems that have arisen so that you can be supported as needed.
 
You may not take this module if you have already taken the Level 2 sister module HAS2010 OR are on an ‘Employment Experience’ programme and have undertaken a placement during level 3.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The main aim of this module is to support you in making the transition from an academic to a professional work environment. For the purposes of this module, the transition will only be short-term (a 35-hour volunteer or paid position to be completed any time up until the start of Term 3), but the skills and knowledge you develop as part of the module will help you strategically navigate your independent career journey after you graduate.

By the end of the module, you will have:

• gained and practised employability skills initially delivered in workshops from the Placement Team, such as: Career Decision-Making, CV and Application Writing, Recruitment and Selection (including interview experience), and sourcing work placements.
• built confidence in how to secure and make the most of professional opportunities that you are interested in.
• developed the ability to engage in compassionate and evidence-informed self-reflection.
• attended academic seminars on key employment-related issues and will have acquired critical and theoretical perspectives on topics such as AI Technologies and Ethics in the Workplace, Digital Labour, and Equality and Diversity in the Workplace.
• Completed independent work experience and study with the assistance of the Placement Team.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced ability to reflect critically on practical experiences gained, and the impact these experiences may have on your views and actions
• 2. Establish connections between the more subject-specialist skills acquired as part of your degree and the skills required in the workplace

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Demonstrate an advanced critical understanding of the social, cultural and political considerations which influence employment settings, using appropriate discipline-specific theoretical perspectives to analyse those settings
• 4. Demonstrate an advanced ability to communicate (in writing and in speech) in a manner appropriate to the particular workplace

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Develop/enhance practical employability and work-based skills and experience, including the ability to identify and reflect on personal challenges and to learn from their resolution
• 6. Demonstrate the ability to use a range of technologies and applications relevant to most workplaces

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that the module will be structured as follows:

• Your 35-hour placement can take place anytime from the moment you are registered on the module but must be completed by the beginning of Term 3. It can be taken as one block of time i.e. during one week or part-time over a few weeks.
• Placements are complex and their suitability needs to be agreed by both the Module Convenor and Placement team to ensure it builds the skills and experience that will support your graduate career choices.
• You must complete the necessary ‘paperwork’ no later than three weeks before the placement begins for it to be approved and count towards the module.
• Employability support by the Careers Team and Placement Team will be available from when the module is chosen until beginning of Term 3. This will include a wide range of support, these typically, but not exclusively, include workshops, asynchronous resources on ELE, SharePoint and LinkedIn, 1to1 appointments and email support.

Term 1 will include:

• 10 hours of employability workshops/lectures, typically 5 x 2 hr workshops or combination of 1hr lectures and 2hr workshops
• 5 x 2-hour interdisciplinary academic seminars
• Consultations with module tutor

Term 2 will include:

• 1 x 2-hour drop-in Placement team catch up workshop
• 1 x 2-hour Assessments Workshop

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Gibbs G, Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods, Oxford, 1988.
• Eran Fisher and Christian Fuchs, eds, Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
• Ilana Gerhson, Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today, University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• Alex Rosenblat, Uberland: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work, University of California Press, 2018.
• Will Stronge and Kyle Lewis, Overtime: Why We Need A Shorter Working Week, Verso, 2021.
• Nancy Leong, Identity Capitalists: The Powerful Insiders Who Exploit Diversity to Maintain Inequality,  Stanford University Press, 2021.
• Prasad, Pushkala Prasad, Alison M. Konrad and Judith K. Pringle, eds, Handbook of Workplace Diversity, Sage, 2006.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• Placements Hub SharePoint - Placements Hub - Home
• Placements Hub LinkedIn - (21) University of Exeter - Placements Hub: Overview | LinkedIn
• Career Zone - Career Zone | Career Zone | University of Exeter

Key words search

Work placement, work experience, placement, internship, employability skills, career development.