I aim to promote an inclusive culture in my organisation. I have a focus on promoting cross-generational working. We welcome student interns as staff, and while not all students are young, they do tend to lower the average age about the place.
I am delighted to have such a great group of interns who work with us in Learning, Teaching and Web Services (LTW) all year, across all of our teams and projects.
Currently we host around 40 interns. In the summer we will add around 20 more.
I am pleased to see we will have new interns looking at AI in L&D, Green Web Estate, VLE Excellence, Web Migration, Accessibility, Training and Events and Communications.
All our internships are paid. We aim to support students at times of rising living costs by providing high quality work experience opportunities which will offer them a head start into digital jobs in the future.
Every year we take a snapshot of accessibility in our VLE. Over the summer 3,508 documents across 1,441 courses from across the University were reviewed against a defined selection of accessibility criteria by our excellent team of interns. The results were encouraging:
87.6% of documents reviewed were named appropriately (i.e. so that users can anticipate the contents in advance of opening the files)
Within the documents checked, 74.4% used a more accessible font (sans serif)
80.7% of documents were justified/aligned in a way that supports more users (i.e. not centre or fully justified)
Italics text is harder for some people to read in blocks, and 89.4% of documents contained no blocks of italics. The same counts for blocks of capital letters, and a whopping 97.9% of documents contained no blocks of capital letters.
Well done to all at University of Edinburgh who are changing their practice to be more inclusive.
I aim to promote an inclusive culture in my organisation. I have a focus on promoting cross-generational working. We welcome student interns as staff, and while not all students are young, they do tend to lower the average age about the place.
I am delighted to have such a great group of interns who will work with us all year across all of our teams and projects.
Joining our two Napier Web Development Interns (who work with us full-time) and our Web Governance Intern ( who has been with us for ages), we also have this year: a Digital Content Training Research Intern, a Digital Marketing Intern, a Diversity Recruitment and Attraction Intern, a Media Administration Intern, an Edtech Operations Intern, a Design System and Web Media Intern, a Nudge Intern, a Student Notifications Service Software Developer Intern, a User Research Intern, 2 Digital Learning Interns, 7 Learn Foundations Interns, 4 Web Content Migration Liaison Assistants and a Digital Skills Trainer – Coding Intern!
I will also be having regular ‘Heads Learn from Interns’ session where the LTW senior management team will hear recommendations and advice from the interns, based on their insights and expertise.
And yes, many of our interns do stay, or return and have careers with us after they graduate.
I am delighted to have been able to create a post this summer for a ‘Nudge Intern’ to work with us to think about how we can use Nudge theory in designing our services and supporting our users.
Annika has written a blog about her thinking and a report for me about why I need a longer term role in my team. I must say, she has convinced me and if she agrees, we will keep her as part of our team for the rest of this year.
“The team uses a human-centred design approach and an iterative development process incorporating feedback and gradual improvement. These similarities make the UX and Digital Consultancy team a great place to begin to incorporate nudges. There are complexities that make implementing nudges more challenging but should prove to be surmountable given additional time. It takes time to come up to speed on longer-term projects. Planning nudges should take place throughout the project timeline and be implemented as an iterative process with feedback. Additionally, the University structure with self- governing schools and deaneries makes it difficult to implement comprehensive nudges. Instead, individual nudges may need to be drafted for each.
Groups within LTW that already identify pain points are better prepared to start nudging. Being able to spot and define unwanted behaviour easily makes designing a nudge simpler. The report provides recommendations for continuing the work of implementing nudges in LTW. The first recommendation involves nudging users toward creating better online content. The existing resources are excellent but are being underutilised. I discuss recommendations to bring the guidelines to the users while using the Web Publishing Platform. Next, I outline a recommendation to enhance the use of data analytics within LTW. There is a need to combine the preexisting data into a format to facilitate and inform data-driven decision-making. The final recommendation is to introduce nudges in ways of working. This would increase familiarity with what nudges are and how to implement them.”
A picture of some of our interns in previopus years. Picture not taken by me. Original at: http://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/mini-series-turning-internships-into-blog-posts-and-friendship-into-teamwork/
In common with many other universities we worked with students over the summer to prepare for hybrid learning and teaching. LTW recruited and managed 44 student interns who migrated over 3000 courses from 20 schools into the institutional template in our VLE.
The Learn Foundations project team is experienced in employing student interns to support business requirements generated as a result of the implementation of the Learn Foundations approach. This year however, the number of interns working with the team and School colleagues was quadrupled and the students all had to work remotely as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
From the support provided by the student interns, the following was achieved:
Over 3000 20/21 courses migrated onto the Learn Foundations template;
Over 1000 of the above courses supported with content migration;
Over 100 academics liaised with directly regarding content migration;
Over 600 courses were mapped with over 80, 000 items reviewed to allow for an institutional baseline for Learn courses to begin to be created;
Undertook over 16, 000 accessibility checks across circa 2000 19/20 Learn Courses to understand ‘how accessible’ content and courses are within Learn;
Careful thought went in to supporting the interns to bond as a team and structure their days with a mix of work, set breaks and social activities to keep them busy, motivated and refreshed. A daily briefing session was held to discuss tasks, review progress and allocate activities, this also provided the interns with an opportunity to come together as a team. These sessions have been positively evaluated by the students who valued the structure and sense of purpose they provided. They also enabled students to raise questions with team members about technical questions and other issues.
“Having a set time for a call each morning was great as it provided a structure and set out the tasks. It also allowed us to feel more a part of the team.”
In addition to the morning briefing, the team instigated a twice-weekly social hour for students to come together and have a bit of fun. These served to support team bonding and break up work flow. These were managed by the project manager and project administrator and were positively evaluated by the students.
“The social hours were great to allow us to bond as a team. It created a healthier atmosphere and made us more comfortable working with each other.”
Coordination
With such a large number of interns working remotely there was a risk that the coordination of task allocation and delivery could become fragmented and messy. Microsoft Teams was used as a work platform with one central channel for all students and latterly, additional work specific channels were created for those students involved in certain tasks.
“I think working on Microsoft teams, having dedicated channels and a daily meeting worked well.”
There were challenges in managing workflow throughout the internship as a result of the large number of students involved and rapidly changing business requirements as a result of the speed with which School colleagues were adapting and adjusting to new ways of working. When there was a break in workflow, students were encouraged to use LinkedIn Learning as a tool for professional development.
Hardware, software and the internet
Students were offered hardware to ensure they were able to deliver their work from home. In previous years, computers and laptops would have been available from an office base. Some of the students experienced a delay in receiving hardware which had an impact on their ability to get started straight away with their work.
The students commented on the challenges of remote working. Some experienced periods of isolation and felt separated from their colleagues; most appreciated the effort that went in to building a team and keeping them involved and busy.
“It was tough doing this remotely as you couldn’t really get to know your colleagues. The social hours helped but I think it was often tough to organise fun activities with each other and people often backed out.”
“It was really nice that we were given so much social time, as it felt especially isolating working from home and not meeting other people.”
“It was challenging for a start to bond online however after a few weeks our team became quite close.”
The team was aware that technical and internet issues may impact on workflow and took positive steps to support the interns with hardware and software advice. These issues were taken account of in the work flow to ensure the students were not placed under pressure or disadvantaged as a result of these factors which were out of their control. This was appreciated by the students.
“The team was very understanding of technical or internet issues which was great because that could have been stressful.”
Remote working
Despite the challenges of engaging with such a large number of student interns working from home, the experience of remote working seems to have been valued by them. They identified the challenges but most also commented on how beneficial the experience had been to them.
“It was a really developing experience because I think I learnt more about working in a team virtually than when working in the office! The number of emails and messages sent also made me much more comfortable with working online in a professional setting.”
“The opportunity to work remotely in a team has been a valuable experience. Because of this, I believe that my communication skills and confidence in working independently have improved.”
Investment and outcomes
Whilst the students have highly evaluated their internship experience, the investment required from the team to support such a large number of students and provide them with a high quality experience, was high, especially by the project manager and project administrator. It is estimated that between them, the project manager and project administrator, invested the equivalent of 4 months of work over the internship period to supporting the students with additional resource from Colleges for supporting students allocated to them. That said, the students delivered a collective equivalent of 21 months of work (based on the hours worked by each intern over the period). This represents a four-fold return on investment. The student interns effectively provided a focused resource boost, at scale, over the 5 months that they were employed.
Whilst this larger number of students has had to be carefully managed, the return has far outweighed the investment, although should this approach be adopted next year, consideration may need to be given to the appointment of an internship coordinator to ensure a continuing positive experience for the students and the ongoing quality of their work. Feedback gained from School colleagues has been unanimously positive about the work completed by the student interns.
Without the considerable impact of the student interns, the project would not have been able to ease the burden from Schools of taking on the Learn Foundations approach, especially at such a business critical time, nor would the project have been in a position to work at such a granular level to ensure courses were effectively migrated to Learn Foundations.
With the dedicated support of the Learn Foundations team, the student interns have become ambassadors for Learn Foundations, widening the positive impact of the approach and demonstrating the value of student as partners in the delivery of University-wide activities.
I aim to promote an inclusive culture in my organisation. I have a focus on promoting cross-generational working. We welcome student interns as staff, and while not all students are young, they do tend to lower the average age about the place.
