Development of processes and assessment to facilitate a broad multidisciplinary Work Integrated Learning package

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) units are often discipline specific and constructed for majors or degrees with a strong vocational orientation. The current paper describes a new undergraduate unit with its genesis in an effective and very successful public relations internship. The original unit enjoyed strong support from industry partners and was instrumental in many graduates securing employment upon or before graduation. The school owning the public relations major also offers majors and degrees in other communications and social sciences disciplines, some vocational and some not. The school sought to capture the eagerness of students to engage in workplace participation, but against an institutional imperative to consolidate teaching activities, creating internships or industry placements for each discipline was out of the question. The principal challenge was to create sufficient genericism without diluting the success enjoyed by the PR internship program or detracting from the need for effective WIL outcomes. The result was a set of processes and assessments and management practises that could be efficiently and readily adopted by any participating discipline. Thus the unit could run every semester and separate disciplines could opt in or out depending upon demand. Efficiencies were to be optimised while still delivering the outcomes desired by students, industry partners, and the academics involved.