Ruth Whittaker (r.g.whittaker@gcu.ac.uk) 

Margaret Hawthorne (Margaret.Hawthorne@gcu.ac.uk)

• Develop strong and effective partnerships between GCU, college partners, NHS, placement providers, trainers and professional bodies.
• Support the emergence of new SHLS policy and working groups to monitor and develop readiness to manage WBL experience
• Encourage a robust culture of self evaluation and sustainability by contributing to the Toolkit content and developing a deep understanding of the Toolkit criteria
• Manage barriers by seeking to clarify issues e.g. academic and employer priorities; college and university structures and paperwork; professional body requirements
• Share findings with partner hubs and seek broader regional solutions where feasible e.g. with health boards and placement providers
• Build on GCULEAD’s relationship with Policy and Planning, and Admissions to support sustainable new policy development

 The objective of this pilot is to work with the School of Health and Life Sciences (SHLS) at GCU to support and develop the School’s procedures and policies for recognising and crediting work based learning (WBL) experiences.

2.1  WBL strategy and implementation plan 

2.2 Partnership working

2.3 Business and commercial approaches

2.4 Training and Support for External Staff and Employers

5.4 Understanding employer needs and employee readiness

7.2 Tools to allow evidence collection, learner reflection and related dialogue

7.4 Tools to support communication and knowledge-sharing

7.5 Management and monitoring of work-based learner data

7.8 Access to information, support, training and guidance

The developments from the project will feed into the Interhub health expert working group  to support the development of RPL processes in health degrees nationally

Meeting to establish GCU team and : outline project objectives; select and agree Toolkit criteria; Discuss Vision Statement; Discuss work plan

When using the Toolkit it is important to stress to participants that it is not an auditing tool. Some GCU staff felt that the the Toolkit was presented in a format that could be misleading.

I have also discovered that it can be overwhelming to attempt to look at more than one section of the Toolkit in a meeting and that moving between Areas of Focus can unexpectedly instigate broader detailed areas of discussion beyond the scope of the Toolkit.

I have found it useful to provide a paper copy of the area of focus for discussion supported by the online projection of the Toolkit. I have also found it useful to focus on the time allocated for the meeting to ensure that each self assessment guideline and evidence to look for can be touched on and summarised before beginning the process again. In practice the most recent meetings have therefore been very focussed, intense and quite draining for the participants. 

To date a number of suggestions have emerged from the meetings detailed above. These include:

• reduce repetition in criteria statements (particularly in relation to 2-2 and 5-1)
• Consider adding "Responsiveness to changing local landscape" to 2-3
• Evidence of Diagnostics could be added to 1-1
• The Area of Focus, 'Institutional Readiness' could usefully be be renamed, Institutional Diagnostic Health Check
• Clear and agreed definitions for WBL remain an issue
• The Toolkit presents an implicit model i.e. that WBL should be managed centrally in an organisation. 
• Concern that the Toolkit sometimes presents an academic view of WBL rather than one which is market led
• Toolkit would benefit from an employers section
• Toolkit occasionally presumes that things are done in a certain way e.g. 'Marketing and Communications'
•  broader parameters to capture  issues surrounding curriculum design and the tension between  the individual and cohort experience. For example the use of individual PDPs does not seem sensible if a group approach has been agreed. It makes perfect sense in an individual learning contract.