IT Systems - Staff Development Event
More than 90 HEIs in the UK have students going out on work placement.
With over 120,000 students (on average 1300 at each of these universities)
each year, tracking these students and managing and assessing them whilst
on placement requires a significant logistical operation. With no suitable
commercial software available to help university staff advertise and manage
placements, most staff turn to their own IT departments and request the
development of in-house systems.
These IT systems need to have networked databases to allow
departments/colleagues to share information on student/employer contacts
and status, be web-based for all parties to be able to access their
relevant sections and be integrated into existing VLE portals to allow
staff to provide resources online for students to access.
ASET is the professional association for placement and employability staff,
an educational charity which represents the 1300 members of staff across
the UK involved in the management of work placements. Over the past two
years we have undertaken a major survey of existing IT solutions for
managing placements and as a result have developed two recommendations for
universities.
The first was the production of a publication ‘Managing Placements with IT
and Online’ – a functionality guide designed to cross user/technical
barriers and help in the development of in-house systems that do what
placement staff need them to (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Managing-Placements-
Online-Practice-Guides/dp/0954223160 ).
The second was the endorsement of the leading in-house system – OPUS
developed at the University of Ulster (http://opus.ulster.ac.uk/about.php),
which has been made available open sourced, as an existing system the
fulfils the majority of the requirements of the ‘ideal’ system outlined in
the publication, that is readily and freely available.
An event, entitled ‘IT Systems to Manage Placements’, will be taking place
on Friday 23 November at University of Leeds. It will look at both these
recommendations and demonstrate what is attainable for institutions –
either to develop themselves or to obtain freely ‘off the shelf’.
We hope to welcome many individuals from IT services, as well as our
traditional placement representation, to help promote complementary and
comprehensive development of these systems. The developers of the OPUS
system will be in attendance to demonstrate and answer technical question
about their system.
For more information and to book places, please go to:
www.asetonline.org/events.htm or contact me at the ASET Office
([log in to unmask] and 0114 221 2902).
More details about the publication and OPUS can also be found here:
http://www.asetonline.org/advice.htm#itsystems
Best wishes
Keith
Keith Fildes
Company Administrator
ASET (1982) Ltd
3 Westbrook Court
Sharrow Vale Road
Sheffield
S11 8YZ
Tel: 0114 221 2902
Fax: 0114 221 2903
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.asetonline.org
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