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Work-based placements are central to the university education of allied health and social work (AHSW) students. As a result of COVID-19, the clinical learning environment of students' work-based placements was dramatically altered resulting in numerous documented challenges. This inter-disciplinary study aimed to evaluate AHSW students' perceptions and experiences of completing a diverse range of work-based placements during COVID-19.

This study was a mixed-method inter-disciplinary study using an anonymous online survey consisting of multiple choice, Likert scale and free text questions. Mixed-methods design supported amalgamation of insights from positivism and interpretivism perspectives and enabled research questions to be answered with both breadth and depth. 436 students were invited to participate who were enrolled in five AHSW educational university programmes: speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, radiation therapy and social work. Data collected was analysed using both quantitative (descriptive and analytical statistics) and qualitative (thematic analysis) methods.

118 students participated (response rate: 27%) representing a range of AHSW disciplines who attended diverse placement settings. While there was extensive disruption in the learning environment leading to increased levels of stress and concern, a triad of individual and systemic supports helped to ensure positive work-based placement experiences and student success for the majority of AHSW students during COVID-19: (1) university preparation and communication; (2) placement site and supervisor support; and (3) students' resilience and capacity to adapt to a changed work-place environment.

This inter-disciplinary study reports the work-based placement experiences from the professional education programmes of healthcare students during the COVID-19 pandemic, giving a unique view of their perspectives and learning during this unprecedented crisis.

The study compares how work-integrated learning (WIL) placement positioning, duration, assessment strategies and environment at three Southern African universities influence engineering students' academic and employability outcomes.

The study used a qualitative case study approach that drew on the principles of collaborative autoethnography (CAE). The researchers reflected on WIL placement practices, structure, assessment, environment and outcomes at their universities and then analysed the reflections using comparative descriptive techniques.

The study reports no uniformity among the universities in positioning WIL placement in the curriculum. It is done during end-of-year vacations, between the penultimate and final year or in the last year. The study found WIL placement positioning does not influence academic outcomes; however, the influence on employability outcomes needs further investigation. Components of WIL placement assessment are similar, presentations, logbooks and reports. However, there are differences in the weightings of the various assessment components and the contribution of the industry supervisor. There is a growing trend towards placing students within universities to mitigate the challenges of limited opportunities of placements available in the industry. The impact of this also needs to be further investigated. Lastly, there are policy-related challenges in placing international students. Work restrictions on student visas limit international students’ access to WIL placement. Southern African universities need to lobby the waivers to student visa restrictions that limit their participation in WIL programs if there are to succeed in their internationalisation efforts.

The study highlights the gaps in understanding Southern African universities' WIL placement practices, particularly relating to the positioning of WIL placement in the curriculum, the assessment methods used and the theory to work integration and employability outcomes.

In this study, the authors explore students' and industry’s perceptions about the challenges and opportunities of participating in a large-scale, non-compulsory, individual, in-person and unpaid business placement programme at an Australian university. The placement programme aims to support students' workplace transition by emphasising the development of key employability skills through reflective learning and linking theory to practice.

Utilising a case study methodology and integrating survey questionnaires, the authors collected both quantitative and qualitative data with large sample sizes.

The results highlight curriculum areas for improvement, emphasising tailored feedback to manage placement expectations and addressing employability skill strengths and weaknesses.

Recommendations include co-partnering with students to develop short, tailored and hot tip videos along with online learning modules, including the presentation of evidence-based statistics to inform students about post-programme employment prospects.

The study contributes to benchmarking good practices in non-compulsory, individual, in-person and unpaid placement pedagogy within the business education context.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the method of field work supervision in BSW and MSW programmes offered through open and distance learning (ODL) at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). The key argument of the paper will focus on the fact that despite various challenges, field work supervision through ODL provides lot of scope and flexibility to students, generating a cadre of trained social work professionals.

The paper adopts a case study approach in presenting the various methods employed for field work supervision by the University. This section will highlight the achievements in terms of developing indigenous theory course and the best practices adopted by IGNOU to train social work professionals through adequate and timely supervision in the ODL mode.

Field work supervision in the ODL mode poses many challenges, especially when compared to that in the conventional universities. Some of these include irregular meeting of supervisor and student, inability of students to meet supervisor due to several reasons like remote location, poor economic background, lack of leave for working professionals, etc.

There is a need for developing a mechanism to regularly orient field work supervisors in supervising students in the ODL mode. It is recommended that regular field work practicum workshops be conducted for supervisors and students. Viva for field work could be made mandatory at different regional centres. Field work supervision could be enhanced through the use of technology, namely, Skype, e-mail, WhatsApp, etc.

The paper describes the various nuances of field work supervision through ODL system. It is an original work and is of great value in understanding the challenges and difficulties encountered by learners and academic counsellors throughout the process of supervision. The paper highlights important recommendations by the stakeholders themselves in mitigating the challenges faced during field work supervision through ODL.

This study aims to shed light on how internships' features drive employability outcomes and answers the question of how internships that maximize the employability of interns can be designed. The study assumes that the duration of an internship, degree of formalization and the use of internship-specific motivational practices by companies are likely to influence interns' perceptions of employability.

A study among interns investigated the relationship between different internship features and interns' employability. Data on the duration of the internship, motivational practices specific to internships and the formalization of the internship process were collected from a large sample of 13,565 interns in 27 European countries from 15 to 35 years old.

The findings suggest that internship duration has a curvilinear effect on employability with increasing effects on employability at the beginning of the internship, followed by a decrease over time. In addition, the use of practices specifically designed to motivate interns also favors the interns' employability. Finally, formalization of the internship placement moderates the effect of motivational practices on employability.

By identifying key features of the internship experience – duration, formalization and motivational practices – the authors contribute to the theory related to the development of career resources and employability in young adults and show that these features significantly shape young adults' employability perceptions.

In a fast evolving labour market, higher education graduates need to develop employability competences. Key in becoming employable is the ability to reflect on learning experiences, both within a curriculum as well as extra-curricular and work placements. This paper wants to conceptualise how an online learning platform might entail a reflective practice that systematically supports students in reflecting on their learning experiences.

When studying online learning platforms for developing students' employability competences, it became clear that the effectiveness of the platform depends on how the platform guides students' reflective practice. In turn, the authors studied which features (tools, services and resources) of the online learning platform are guiding the reflective practice.

This resulted in the introduction of an online learning platform, containing a comprehensive set of online learning tools and services, which supports students' reflective practice and, in turn, their employability competences. The online platform facilitates both feedback from curricular and work-related learning experiences and can be used as a start by students for showcasing their employability competences. The reflective practice consists of a recurrent, systematic process of reflection, containing various phases: become aware, analyse current state, draft and plan a solution, take action and, finally, reflect in and on action.

Future research revolves around studying the features of online learning platforms and their role in fostering students' reflection and employability competences.

The conceptual model provides concrete indicators on how to implement online learning platforms for supporting students' reflection and employability competences.

This is the first article that analyses an online learning platform that guides students' reflective practice and fosters their employability competences. The authors provide concrete suggestions on how to model the online platform, building further on reflective practice theory.

The association of work and learning has been well established for many years. However, some of the terms used to describe the various pedagogies related to work and learning have been used interchangeably, with many lacking definitional clarity and scope. These include work-related learning (WRL), work-based learning, workplace learning (WPL) and work-integrated learning (WIL). This agglomerating approach to usage has resulted in pedagogical confusion and what some theorists call a “problematization” for the field, resulting in undermining shared understanding and potential benefit. The purpose of this conceptual paper is an attempt to unpack the meaning and application of some of the key pedagogical terms used in the applied field of work + learning theory and practice.

Conceptual modelling and qualitative descriptions of each pedagogy.

Many of the work + learning pedagogies do overlap and cohere but attempts to create umbrella terms, which apply to all theories and approaches, are misguided; definitional clarity with the different modes of practice is required for sustainable educational outcomes.

A proto-theoretical model, along with a breakdown of distinguishing features of each term as well as their source in the published literature, has been developed to improve clarity and aid the future praxis of educators.

Tourism is one of the most notable features of the contemporary globalised world. The tourism industry is becoming increasingly vital to the economy of many developing and developed countries around the globe. The demand of the tourism industry has posed a challenge for tourism training providers to move towards a more responsive and internationalised curriculum to enhance work readiness for tourism graduates who are expected to work with an increased number of international tourists. The purpose of this paper is analyse whether and how internationalisation has been implemented in the tourism training programmes across six institutions in Vietnam.

The research deployed case studies as research strategy with interviews and document analysis as two instruments of data collection.

The major findings show that even though the tourism industry demands graduates to possess global competency, knowledge and skills, the curriculum does not prioritise the internationalisation dimensions and the faculty members are not facilitated to be internationally active in their roles. Overall, internationalisation is still fragmented and ad hoc in these institutions even though the private institutions in this research appear to be more responsive to the trend of internationalisation in education than their public counterparts.

The paper provides recommendations on how to effectively embed internationalisation components into local tourism training programs in Vietnam.

The research bridges the gap in the literature on internationalisation of the local tourism programme in non-English-speaking countries.

The authors proposed that participation in large-scale, structured events designed to match students to employers' internship opportunities could support students' employability by focussing students' career goals, strengthening students' career self-efficacy and growing students' social capital.

Interviews were carried out with 49 students both before and after the students took part in the event to assess whether students career goals, self-efficacy or social capital changed after taking part in the events. In the second interview, the authors also asked students what outcomes students gained from the event and how the event process had contributed to these outcomes.

Students' descriptions of their outcomes from the event aligned with social capital theory and self-efficacy theory. The students valued the information, connections, skills and experience they developed through taking part in the interviews and connecting with employers and students. The longitudinal analyses revealed that most students career goals did not change, but students' career self-efficacy improved and students could identify more actions for achieving their career goals after taking part in the event. Importantly, these actions were often explicitly connected with information or connections that students gained from the event.

The interviews illustrate that students can build social capital from short, one-on-one engagement with employers that then enable them to identify ways of furthering students' career goals. The authors' findings suggest that structured, event-based engagement with employers can provide an efficient and equitable means of enhancing students' social capital and career self-efficacy.

The purpose of this paper is to look at how employability is currently embedded within courses to prepare students for their transition into the world of work, identifying the teaching and learning strategies employed.

A review of the relevant literature was conducted. The study analysed experiential data and the logged reports of student work placements over a period of five years, to determine the relationship of such placements to both academic results and long term employability. The study considered placements from the viewpoints of the university, students and employers. It proceeded to look at the current embedding of employability within the teaching curriculum, specifically teaching and learning strategies for personal professional development courses and the employability passport. It also looked at the role of the work placement tutor.

The main revelation was that the employability skills sought by employers were mostly “soft” and therefore behaviours, rather than “hard” teachable skills, which has significant implications for the introduction of the teaching excellence framework (TEF) and the provision of suitable metrics.

The study and findings are limited to a single university in the UK.

The results of the study and conclusions drawn from the analysis of findings, led to the identification of the student, institution, tutor, employer) quartet of actors for employability. The paper also postulates the ramifications of the introduction of the TEF on employability.