placement-visits

Information for tutors interviewing students on placement (industrial experience)

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Purpose of the meeting

The purpose of meeting undergraduate Computer Science students on placement is to:

1. Find out what they have been doing
2. Get students to reflect on what they’ve done well (with their manager)
3. Get students to reflect on what they could do better (with their manager)
4. AOB

Most employers can do these visits remotely via Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

Once you’ve visited your tutees, please fill in the short tutees form at bit.ly/placement-visit-form (UoM login required) to capture this information and so that we know which students have been visited. The meetings usually last somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.

1: What have you been doing?

• Tell me about your employer and the products or services they provide?
• Which products or services have you been working on?
• What methodologies and tools have you been using ?
• What have you been surprised by since you started work?

2: What went well (WWW)?

• What is going well?
• Are there any projects or achievements you are particularly proud of (ask student first, then their manager) compare results
• What skills or knowledge have you managed to build so far (include soft & hard skills)?

3: Even Better If (EBI)?

• What areas have you identified for improvement in the future (ask student first, then their manager) compare results
• How are you planning to develop these skills? Include soft & hard skills
• Are there any other things you want to work on before the placement finishes?

4. Any other business?

• Have they sorted a final year project? This is a good opportunity to check that the student has chosen or proposed a final year project.
• The type of placement report the student writes depends on their degree program:
  • For Bachelors students, there’s a self explanatory template at overleaf.com/latex/templates/industrial-placement-report/vcjymrgmcpzh which they can submit via Blackboard
  • For MEng students, the details for MEng report submission are on blackboard for COMP40901 at online.manchester.ac.uk
• AOB
• For tutees, there’s some more guidance on these meetings at www.cdyf.me/starting#visits

Scheduling meetings using Outlook

Students typically finish their placements anytime between June and August, so it’s usually best to have the meeting before June.

You may find the tools in Outlook useful for scheduling the meeting, there are a few ways of doing this:

• outlook.office.com/bookwithme
• www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/ourservices/popular/microsoft365/bookings/ for requesting the service to be activated for your login by IT
• support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/bookings-with-me-setup-and-sharing-ad2e28c4-4abd-45c7-9439-27a789d254a2 general documentation from Microsoft on bookings with me
• support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-a-scheduling-poll-34176e59-c87a-4a19-85a4-bb35050ace02 an alternative is to use a scheduling poll, works on Windows, Mac and the browser version of outlook.office.com