A Work Integrated Learning Electronic Logbook
Project Overview
The Worklog App is a smartphone app (developed for both iOS and Android) which is used by Vocational Education students to digitally access and place their work placement requirements (WIL).
The Vocational Education Design Team is delivering this project with the support and sponsorship of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education and Vocational Education, through the Pitch Tank Initiative. Pilot delivery is expected by 21 December 2018.
The VE Design Team have engaged various project partners across RMIT schools to steer the project scope and feature set so that it meets the needs of course coordinators and appropriately uses existing internal infrastructure. The development team is currently seeking input from ITS to ensure it meets policy requirements for a successful rollout in 2019.
For this initial pilot launch, functionality will be limited to timesheet tracking to ensure students complete required work placement hours.
Students will be able to enter their work placement requirements within a mobile application that integrates with Canvas and uses a digital document signing tool to seek verification, by email, from their workplace supervisor. It would then be aggregated for acknowledgement by the course coordinator. This builds on already established infrastructure, to deliver a required component of VE service delivery.
This type of innovation does not exist in Canvas and will provide better integration of learning tools within a course.
Current approaches tend to be paper-based, requiring manual data entry, which carry the associated risks of errors and documentation loss. In our investigation other LTIs currently available within the Canvas ecosystem available to RMIT do not specifically meet VE needs.
Key objectives of the project are to:
- streamline workplace hour tracking processes for students and teachers, by
- reducing staff time required to complete data entry of logbooks
- reduce errors transcribing logbook data.
- provide a consistent recording methodology across VE for workplace participation
- reinforce Canvas as the primary online learning tool for VE
- reinforce a digital literate workforce
- provide a long term storage pathway for workplace participation
- encourage modern practices for workplace documentation.
The target audience for this project are RMIT students, industry partners, course coordinators and teachers.
During development, the project will include:
- consultation with the VE community at RMIT
- a review of current practices and systems for collecting student participation
- consultation with RMIT ITS representatives
- adoption of internal product management principles
- collection of data that meets compliance needs for VET
- extensive involvement of teachers as SMEs and industry specialists
- development of a tool that can be further adapted to meet VE needs
- consideration of sustainability and flexibility in design
- a roadmap for future delivery and maintenance
- an implementation plan and support.
Information Flow
There are three actors in this data interchange. The student, the workplace-supervisor and the accredited assessor. The supervisor is often not an RMIT employee, but is a trusted individual at the student’s workplace who will certify to the assessor that the student did complete the hours that are being claimed. The assessor is accredited to be able to sign-off the completed hours.
Currently the work placement logbook is either a paper logbook or some type of online form, inconsistently delivered across Vocational Education. Whatever the format, the data flow (student workplace hours) is the same. The student initiates by claiming to have completed a certain number of placement hours at a given workplace. This assertion is then verified by the supervisor. This verified assertion is later ratified by the assessor and recorded against the student’s academic record.
Since the workplace supervisor is often not an RMIT employee, they will not have access to RMIT ITS systems, including Instructure Canvas. This precludes the possibility of using Canvas, the central repository of this information.
Additionally, the solution must also be simple to use as there is a possibility of lower digital literacy amongst the supervisor cohort and/or less access to desktop computers. This means that a mobile-first, simple design is required.
Find below a screencast of the key features.
