Providing work experience opportunities to students in tertiary and vocational education courses has long been a core element of health and teaching disciplines. Professional qualifications in these areas often require mandated periods of workplace experience demonstrating and validating the student’s practical understanding of their academic studies.
Participants in clinical and pre-service teacher work placements can realise many benefits from the experience, helping relate their learning to their post-education career path options. Statistics show that around 60% of students participating in work experience programs will obtain employment at one of the places they have done a placement. There is no better path to vocational outcomes for students than a well-organised work integrated learning program.
It should be no surprise that tertiary educators globally are adding work experience components to many disciplines and courses outside of the traditional teaching and health disciplines. The pressure on educational institutes to prepare students for the workforce will only increase, and outcome-based education measurement tied to vocational engagement will continue to be an important determinant in student selection of educational options in the future.
With this future in mind, in 2008, Melbourne, Australia-based technology company QuantumIT launched a venture to develop a software product to enable tertiary educators to organise work experience programs at scale for their students. Working with La Trobe University in Melbourne, the first release of the InPlace student placement system went into production in 2010. Thirteen years of investment and continuous development since has seen the product deployed in universities and colleges in 11 countries supporting over 9 million students undertaking work experience placements.
Australian designed, developed, owned, supported
Proudly still Australian-based and majority owned by its founder, InPlace design, development, support, and management is provided by a team of 80 staff based in Melbourne, with around 50 staff based in the UK, US, Canada, and Philippines. Motivation and inspiration come from this team and staff, academics, and students from around 200 universities and colleges.
Global leading technology
With the recent signing of the Australian National University InPlace in 2024 can claim 12 of the global top 50 universities in the 2024 QS University rankings.
Management of a student work experience placement program is a burdensome and costly exercise for educators. Sourcing placements from current host partners and expanding the partner group requires efficient communication and record-keeping tools. Ensuring students are appropriately assigned to placements requires handling multiple allocation models, processing complex rules, stringent risk management protocols and tracking. Attendance tracking, activity logging, supervisor assessments, participant surveys, incident logging, payment tracking, and accommodation management for remote student placements are some of the core requirements of an enterprise placement program.
This is where InPlace comes in. InPlace is a cloud-based software platform that supports the end-to-end process of organising and managing student work experience assignments.
Single enterprise solution
From the outset, a core objective of the InPlace design was to create a product that would service all of an educational institute’s student placement requirements in a single integrated system. The key to managing such a program for the educator is building and maintaining relationships with a “community of employers” that provide ongoing and trusted placement opportunities for students. The educator needs a technology platform flexible enough to meet the variant needs of all the disciplines and placement types – internships, clinical placements, student-teacher assignments, industry projects, and volunteering jobs, which enables the model of building an institute-wide database of employers.
Graduate job sourcing
This valuable resource forms the base of the latest initiative from the InPlace team. 2024 sees the launch of the InPlace Graduate Recruitment product. Layering industry classifications, student vocational skills, occupational categories and employer and job skill requirements on the InPlace model supports a ground-breaking new capability that takes InPlace to its logical next level. The institute’s nurtured base of employer partners becomes the focus of the graduate recruitment program, bolstered by the corporate relationships formed by the student placement programs and the deep knowledge base of employer and industry sector skill requirements and business needs built through digital records of placement activities.
The key transactional objectives of digitising the placement management function are staff efficiency and improved communication with the students, employers, academics, and workplace supervisors involved in the placement process. Staff efficiency is achieved through standardised and automated processes, integrated data management and out-of-the-box support for internal and external reporting requirements. Process efficiency achieved with InPlace deployments is typically 40-50%, enabling staff support roles to transition from primarily data entry to focusing on managing the partner relationships and coaching students to be ready to maximise the value of the placement opportunity.
In a domain where demand for placements will always exceed supply, hosts will always choose to work with the educators who manage the process well – students well prepared, pre-requisites organised, inductions completed, etc. Booked placements being wasted due to student no-shows or late cancellations is a relationship destroyer and solely a result of inadequate technology.
Continuous curriculum tuning
The real long-term value being delivered by the digitisation of the placement process to the depth can be achieved with InPlace, which is the employment pathway for the educator’s students. The institute-wide work experience placement program builds a digital record of student capabilities, alignment with employer needs, mapped to curriculum outcome learning objectives, and drives a graduate recruitment program based on data and analytics.
InPlace: Elevating work integrated learning to new heights, connecting today’s education with tomorrow’s career opportunities.
Incorporating InPlace placement software into The University of Queensland’s infrastructure not only streamlines administrative processes but also optimises resource allocation while fostering student success through informed and strategic placement decisions. It is the technological cornerstone that empowers our university to adapt and succeed in the ever-evolving landscape of education student placements. — Danny M, Senior Administration Officer, Professional Experience, The University of Queensland.
The Australian National University recently went to market to procure a new Placement Management System to replace an existing platform that was not connected to existing ANU software. We decided to go with InPlace due to its advanced features, which allow a streamlined student, host, and administrator experience. The additional features around reporting and analytics are something we are looking forward to utilising to make data-driven, informed decisions. — Elizabeth B, Associate Director, ANU Careers & Employability, Australian National University.
InPlace allows us to efficiently coordinate and track our Professional Experience placements and provide a platform for communicating with students, schools, and Early Childhood services, all within the one integrated system. — Lauren G, Support Officer, Professional Experience, Deakin University.
03 8650 9800
Comments