To meet policy and accreditation requirements, we ask that placement hosts for our students meet a set of criteria. These are:
- That the collection and services provided reflect the size, nature and needs of the organisation or community served by the information agency;
- That the student will be supervised by a professionally recognised information professional; and,
- That the organisation can and will design, develop and support an appropriate program to meet the student’s professional goals.
Other factors to consider:
- Our students usually have competing demands with work/life/study and other commitments and may request to have flexible placement arrangements – such as doing their 10-day requirement over a number of weeks rather than a two-week block. We stress to our students that in the first instance, this must be suitable for the host and that they must also negotiate mutually agreeable start/finish times for each day. When organising the placement, students are instructed that they must provide us with the exact dates their placement will occur so we can ensure accurate recordkeeping (and know when to make our placement check-in calls) and for insurance purposes. IF the dates need amending later it is the student’s responsibility to notify us because if they vary dates without our knowledge they may be subject to failing their placement subject.
- Note that unlike placements in some other professional areas (e.g., nursing, education, etc.), this placement is not a practicum/internship. Check-ins between subject coordinator, student, and host supervisor are carried out via email/phone. Should the host feel the need to conduct check-in(s) in a different form(s), the host can contact the placement subject coordinator or the Information Studies WPL academic lead.
- At the end of the placement, students should sit with the designated placement supervisor to discuss their placement and sign a Placement Review Meeting Record. The students attach this signed document to their final assessment task.
Are you interested in hosting a CSU placement student from the School of Information & Communications Studies?
As the largest School educating library and information professionals in Australia, we have about 220-250 students (on average) a year looking to complete a professional placement. This means we are always interested in organisations that can provide our students with a valuable workplace learning experience. Relevant to the breadth of our courses and curriculum, our students can go to a wide variety of information organisations – including, but not limited to: public and State libraries, school and academic libraries, specialist archives, records offices, government organisations, data management service units and more.
If you have a desire to help educate the upcoming generation of information professionals – and perhaps have a special project a student could learn from participating in – please do get in contact with Dr Anita Dewi, Chair of the School’s Workplace Learning Committee.
Contact from the School of Information & Communication Studies students:
If your organisation does not want our students to contact you directly then please also let Dr Anita Dewi know and she will work with you about how best to facilitate student placement opportunities with you.