Out of sight, not out of support: monitoring and inclusion beyond campus

Authors:

Yu-Chun Pan, Northeastern University London

Lyn Hamblin, London South Bank University

As with the rest of this project, what follows comes from our first set of interviews with academic and quality staff. The student and employer perspectives that matter particularly here are still to come. Even at this early stage, though, the interviews raise an important question: what needs to travel with the student when learning moves beyond the institution's direct line of sight?

A university has considerable visibility over the teaching and assessment it provides itself. Industry-integrated learning changes that relationship. A student may be supervised by someone outside the university, in an environment the institution does not control, and may produce work that academic staff do not directly see. Moving learning into the workplace therefore creates a practical question about how institutions maintain oversight without controlling the workplace itself.

Colleagues described different ways of staying in contact. One participant set out a structured approach: “we have at least two check-ins with the student while they’re on the work placement, including with the employer”, with a site visit where possible, “particularly if they were a small company and... there wasn’t the same level of regulatory control” on them. For international students, they added, “there’d be visa check-ins” as well.

The important point here is that contact continues after the student crosses into the workplace. The account also suggests that monitoring may respond to the circumstances of the placement rather than look identical in every setting. This connects with Key Practice 11e of the Quality Code, with its attention to supporting students as they move through their studies and towards employment.

Other accounts showed how uneven that visibility can be. In less formal arrangements, oversight can be less visible to academic colleagues. One lecturer, asked how placements were monitored, replied that “that I don’t do personally, but I’m sure it is monitored... there’s a placement officer” who does.

The significance of that example is not whether monitoring is happening, since the interview alone cannot establish that. It is that responsibility can become distributed in ways that make the student's workplace experience less visible to academic staff. Another interview showed why these matters. A colleague described having formal meetings with the student and employer during a placement but also recalled occasions when a problem only became apparent months into the experience. The challenge is therefore not simply to schedule monitoring points, but to maintain enough connection for difficulties to surface when they arise.

The interviews also brought inclusion into this question of visibility. An industry opportunity is only meaningful if a student can access it and receive appropriate support while taking part. One participant described this as unfinished work, pointing to the relationship between institutional support and expectations set elsewhere. They described employers and professional bodies as sometimes “acting as gatekeepers to our ability to support disabled and neurodivergent students into those professions” through the standards and expectations they set. The same interview also drew attention to students whose options may be affected by visa restrictions or their wider circumstances.

This complicates what it means for an institution to remain connected to a student once learning moves into the workplace. The issue is no longer simply whether the university knows how the placement is progressing. It is also whether barriers become visible early enough for the institution and its partners to respond.

Key Practice 11f, with its emphasis on accessible and inclusive assessment and adjustments for individual students, provides one way of looking at that challenge. In an industry-integrated setting, however, some of the conditions surrounding students' learning and assessment may be shaped outside the university. This raises a question that the later stages of the project can explore more fully: what happens when institutional commitments to accessible and inclusive assessment meet professional or workplace expectations that the institution does not itself set?

At this stage, we only have the academic perspective. On inclusion in particular, the student voice will be important. The interviews with students can help us understand whether support that appears present from an institutional perspective is equally visible and usable from theirs, particularly when something is not going well. Employer perspectives will add another side to that picture.

For now, these early interviews suggest that moving learning beyond campus changes the institution's visibility, but not its continuing responsibility to the student. The challenge is to maintain enough connection to understand what the student is experiencing, especially where the conditions of learning are no longer entirely within the university's control.

Assessing real work, and keeping it current

Authors:

Yu-Chun Pan, Northeastern University London

Lyn Hamblin, London South Bank University

This is another early reflection from our QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project, drawn from interviews with academic and quality colleagues. Assessment brought out a particular tension: how to make students' work feel closer to professional practice while still being confident about the academic standard being assessed. The employer and student evidence that will test this picture is still to come.

Several colleagues described a move towards authentic assessment. Rather than setting a task that exists only for the classroom, they talked about designing assessment around the work a graduate might encounter. As one quality lead put it, courses should “think about the kinds of things that a graduate might be doing in their entry level job... through live briefs or... producing an artefact that is... common in that industry”.

The word authentic is itself contested, as that colleague acknowledged, but the intention is clear: assessment should have a recognisable relationship with professional practice. Another interview showed how this can work with a live brief. Academic staff explain the module's learning objectives and work with the employer to shape a real business challenge around learning already validated by the university. Authenticity here does not mean handing the curriculum to the employer; the real-world challenge is brought inside an existing academic framework.

This connects closely with Principle 11 of the Quality Code. Key Practice 11f asks that assessment is fair, reliable, accessible, authentic and inclusive. Designing around industry practice speaks to authenticity, but a task that resembles professional work still needs to assess the right learning in a way that students can understand and engage with. Key Practice 11b, with its focus on students understanding the purpose of their learning, is also relevant.

Keeping assessment current was another concern. Where a curriculum tracks a profession, the context in which students will work does not stand still. Artificial intelligence (AI) provided the clearest example. One lecturer had rewritten their professional ethics teaching to address how students should and should not use AI, including questions about the acceptability of publicly available tools. Here, keeping the curriculum professionally current also raises questions about how new technologies are used within learning and assessment. Key Practice 11g asks providers to establish coherent approaches to technologies such as generative AI and to be clear with students about acceptable use.

The interviews also revealed where flexibility has limits. Where modules carry professional body exemptions, the method of assessment may be fixed in advance. One lecturer described how“the students have to sit the traditional exam closed book, pen, paper... so we... got that restriction as well”. This is a real tension rather than a failing. The same professional recognition that connects a degree to external standards can constrain the choices available when assessment is designed.

Making assessment more closely resemble professional practice also raises the question of assurance. One participant acknowledged that“it is difficult sometimes because you're not in the workplace every day”. Their response was not to claim complete visibility, but to keep learning objectives clear and maintain dialogue with employers.

Elsewhere, colleagues pointed to moderation and external examiners. One quality lead described external examining as “our... stability to know that we are doing the same as everyone else”, and referred to a “network of moderation” they considered “quite vital” and undervalued. Where the work itself varies, these processes provide continuity in how academic standards are judged. This brings the discussion back to reliability within Key Practice 11f.

As with the earlier posts, this is the academic view only. Employers who see students at work, and students reflecting on what they have produced, may see credible evidence of workplace learning differently. Those perspectives are still to come.

For now, the interviews suggest that authenticity and assurance need to move together. Bringing assessment closer to real work creates opportunities for students to demonstrate learning in professionally meaningful ways, but it also makes questions about currency and consistency harder to ignore. The challenge is not simply to make assessment look more like work. It is to do so without losing confidence in what the assessment tells us about the student's achievement.

Employability by design: building it in from the first year

Authors:

Yu-Chun Pan, Northeastern University London

Lyn Hamblin, London South Bank University

In the first round of interviews for our QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project, academic and quality colleagues kept returning to the same idea. It is an early signal rather than a settled finding, since we have yet to hear from employers and students, but it is worth reporting now. Employability is being described not as something added towards the end of a degree, but as something designed through it from the beginning.

A lecturer on a professionally accredited degree put it simply. Professional development, they said, is “not just waiting until their third year, but... it starts from day one at level 4”. From the first weeks, students meet the professional bodies relevant to their field and learn what membership or exemptions could mean for their careers. They are also pointed towards practical sessions on interview technique and assessment centres before much of the teaching has begun. The same pattern appeared in another interview, where a Level 4 module introduces students to professional development early in their studies, with returning placement students helping them understand what they may later encounter in the workplace. Employability then continues into later study rather than appearing for the first time as graduation approaches.

The model they described places the student at the centre, with support coming from across and beyond the university. The underlying point was straightforward: “you can’t sort of teach in isolation without knowing what’s out there in the world”.

That early signposting also matters for quality. Principle 11 of the Quality Code, through Key Practice 11b, asks that students have clear information about their learning outcomes and the purpose of what they do. Making the connection between the curriculum and professional practice visible from the beginning can help students understand not only what they are learning, but where that learning might take them. Rather than leaving that connection to a final-year careers session, it becomes part of how students understand their degree from the outset.

The same interview also challenged a narrow idea of what counts as relevant experience. Students are encouraged to recognise skills developed through a part-time job, volunteering, a caring responsibility or a short online course, rather than treating a formal placement as the only experience that counts.

This has an important inclusion dimension. Not every student is equally able to take an unpaid placement or add another structured activity alongside their studies. Recognising learning through the experiences students already have broadens what can count as evidence of professional development. It also asks students to take an active role in recognising their own development, connecting with the responsibility for one’s own learning described in Key Practice 11d.

Another participant described a different example. An earlier programme there was built to improve employability for students in disciplines where it had sometimes been harder to evidence. Rather than teaching skills in the abstract, an external partner was brought in to run a whole project. As the colleague who led it explained, the partner “is really setting the question to the students, and then having that Dragon’s Den style” assessment of the results.

What is interesting here is not simply that an employer was involved. Professional practice had been brought inside the curriculum rather than offered alongside it as an optional employability activity. Students were working on a real task set by someone outside the university, giving them an opportunity to apply their learning in a context closer to the situations they might encounter after graduation. Another interview showed how reflection can extend that experience. After a live brief, students are asked to consider what they have learnt, where they still need to develop and what they might do next. The industry experience therefore becomes part of how students make sense of their own development, rather than an experience that simply happens to them.

These practices also speak to Key Practice 11e, with its focus on supporting students as they move between academic levels, further study and employment, and recognise the progress they have made. Another interview adds an interesting dimension to that journey: students also have to make sense of the move back from a placement into university study, bringing what they have learnt at work with them. Employability by design is therefore not only about preparing students to enter the workplace. It is also about helping them connect workplace experience back to their academic learning.

These findings come only from academic and quality staff so far. The next phase will test them against employers and students, who may not see employability in the same way. Their views will also help us understand whether the connections institutions believe they are designing into a degree are equally visible to the students experiencing them.

For now, the early lesson is that strong work-integrated learning does not treat employability as a late addition. It is designed into the degree from the beginning, with students taking an active part in understanding how their learning connects to life beyond it.

Bridging, not delegating: keeping hold of quality when industry helps teach

Authors:

Yu-Chun Pan, Northeastern University London

Lyn Hamblin, London South Bank University

We are early into a QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project on assuring quality in industry-integrated learning, and the first voices we have heard are academic and quality colleagues. What they describe is a clear starting point, though one we will test against employers and students as the project goes on.

The project exists because of a straightforward problem. As learning moves into placements, apprenticeships, live briefs and employer-set projects, more of it happens with partners who are not themselves higher education providers operating within the Quality Code framework. Employers and workplace supervisors may shape, support and contribute to a significant part of that learning, but they are not necessarily familiar with FHEQ levels or academic assessment standards. So when teaching is shared with industry, who assures that the learning holds to the standard a degree requires?

The early interviews give a consistent answer. Institutions do not hand that responsibility to the employer. They keep hold of it and build connections that carry the quality across the boundary.

One of those connections is the professional body. A lecturer on a professionally accredited degree described linking the programme to several professional bodies and teaching to their syllabus, so that students earn exemptions and graduate already part-recognised towards a professional qualification. Because professional bodies consult employers when revising their standards, industry expectations can reach the curriculum through the profession rather than through any single workplace. As those standards change, the programme can respond through an established academic process. Industry input is therefore mediated through a quality mechanism the university already recognises.

Another connection is the institution’s own curriculum framework and the validation process behind every course. An associate dean described framework documents that expect work-based learning and employability to be designed into a course from the outset, and a validation process that requires staff to consult employers and to show evidence that they have done so. Any later change to a module or course is then reviewed by standing committees for its effect on that industry-aligned learning. Here the employer contributes at the point of design and review, inside the institution’s own process, rather than being left to assure the learning alone.

Another interview showed what this can involve in practice. For a live brief, academic staff explain the module's purpose and learning objectives, then work with the employer to shape a real business challenge around learning already validated by the university. This translation matters when employers are unfamiliar with academic requirements. The bridge is not only a process; it also involves making academic expectations workable for the people outside the university who contribute to the learning.

A further pattern is a shared quality process that does not change fundamentally according to where learning happens. One leader pointed to a single academic handbook covering apprenticeship and non-apprenticeship degrees alike, while a quality lead described a process that treats academic and work-based provision the same at its core: “At the onset, it's the same process... we don't differentiate between non-credit and credit bearing, it still goes through the same.” Where industry learning differs, the difference is additive: apprenticeships carry additional requirements, rather than operating under a separate or lighter quality regime.

This matters for Principle 11 of the Quality Code. Key Practice 11a asks that teaching, learning and assessment align so that students can demonstrate their achievements. What these interviews suggest is that industry involvement does not change where responsibility for that alignment ultimately sits. Providers still need to ensure that teaching, learning and assessment enable students to demonstrate the achievement required of the award, even when part of the learning takes place in a workplace.

But retaining responsibility is not the same as having a seamless system for exercising it. Responsibility is spread across module leaders, course leaders, placement staff and quality teams, and much can depend on individuals keeping track as employers, placements and standards change. One participant stated: “we are quite reliant on maybe a course leader or a module leader to say that they think a placement is of the appropriate quality. That concerns me a little bit, because it’s not clear.”

Bridging works, but the bridges are not necessarily equally visible or equally resourced, and responsibility rarely sits with one person who can see the whole picture.

These are early findings, and only from the academic side. The next stages will test them against employers, workplace supervisors and students, whose view of where responsibility sits may not match the institution’s. For now, the first thing we are hearing is clear enough to state plainly. When industry helps to deliver the teaching, the institutions in our interviews do not outsource quality. They build the bridges that carry it.