OU Student Views on Work Experience, Work Placements and Virtual Internships

This project aims to further understanding of the views and perceptions of students on work experience and work-placements at the Open University. This is a university-wide project that has support from Faculties and other units following scoping of interest and demand for the information this project will generate. This sits along with other work in EECP on virtual internships and if successful the OfS Bid on virtual internships. 

Increasingly students recognise work placements as a feature of university life they should engage in. While the OU is developing its capabilities in employability and employer engagement, we are a relative late-comer to work-placements and work experience. This stems in part from the logistic difficulties of managing, tracking, organising and supervising placement students. Due to these barriers, placements at the OU have been restricted to particular programs where work experience is part of professional accreditation requirements. As a result, most OU programmes do not have placement requirements. 

An additional factor in this may have been the perception that the majority of our student are already in some form of employment, so may be viewed as needing less support for gaining their first work experience (in contrast with demographically younger students from more traditional universities). However, as the OU student demographic is changing and we should expect an increase in younger students entering our qualifications, questions about work experience become more important for recruiting and retaining those students who have a greater interest in them. Furthermore, in line with our mission to enable disadvantaged students to succeed in Higher education, work experience is a significant enabler for disadvantaged students to enter into the labour market (which is often where they are further disadvantaged if they have little or no work experience). 

The careers service offers some information to students, but how much this is taken up by students is presently unclear. Little is also known about which of our students are attracted to placement opportunities, the challenges they might face if they are interested (for example employed students may have difficulties in allocating time to work experience). Virtual internships at the OU are one of several possible models for work experience in OU students which is likely to see significant investment over the next few years. Asking questions focussed on demand for and interest in work experience and work placements should help to contextualise perceptions about virtual internships within the larger clusters of student views and experiences.