Rolling out a university-wide system to support Work Integrated Learning (WIL) at UNSW

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Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is an essential component of the education strategy and student experience at UNSW. Part of the UNSW 2025 Strategy is aimed at increasing the number of students doing WIL, improving the overall student experience, and driving positive graduate employability outcomes. The UNSW WIL Procedure requires Faculties to provide a WIL opportunity for each in-scope Undergraduate and Postgraduate coursework program by January 2022.

When the WIL processes and systems were analysed across all UNSW Faculties and Schools, it became apparent that there were many manual processes and limitations with existing systems for managing WIL activities (placements/internships/clinics or project-based), including coded spreadsheets and small non-scalable systems.

Over 130 different processes were documented across the University to manage these activities. These processes have now been analysed and standardised where possible across UNSW such that they can be summarised into four main models of WIL activities:

1. Student Sourced (student sources their own WIL activity)

2. Self-Select Opportunity (UNSW sources WIL activity and allows student option to self-select)

3. Competitive Opportunity (UNSW sources WIL activity, then a competitive application process begins)

4. Auto Allocation (UNSW sources WIL activity, and students are automatically allocated to the WIL activity)

InPlace

InPlace was chosen as the single centralised WIL system for UNSW as it can support all four of these models. InPlace is a Cloud based solution supported by Quantum IT in Melbourne. It is currently used by 132 institutions, placing over 1.3 million students in 2.8 million WIL activities.

The suite of InPlace features support the WIL lifecycle from start to finish. InPlace functionality covers all processes, from establishment of the agreement with Partners, requesting and allocating students to WIL activities, to assisting with student timesheets, placement surveys and analytical reporting.

InPlace also acts as a common reporting platform with ability to process efficiencies; a best-practice WIL approach in a scalable, supported software solution. This enables effective compliance and efficient reporting on government regulations for TEQSA.

Student well-being and experience, staff experience and student satisfaction/ success are all additional benefits being driven from the introduction of a university-wide WIL system.

InPlace is currently being implemented across UNSW, with the expectation that all Faculties will be using the system for their WIL processes by the end of 2021. A recently established WIL Support Team, situated within WIL Central, is already helping Faculties transition to the new UNSW enterprise system.

WIL Campus Technology Rollout Project is a collaboration between WIL Central in the Office of the PVCESE and UNSW IT.

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To learn more about WIL at UNSW, visit: wil.unsw.edu.au

For more information on InPlace and the WIL Project, please visit UNSW WIL Staff Portal. (UNSW staff access only)

 

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