Webinar: Implementing SFIA for Work-Integrated Learning: What We've Learned
Work-integrated learning creates distinctive challenges for assessment. This webinar brings together practitioners from two universities to share how they've tackled these challenges in practice.
Dr. Fraser MacDonald
Teaching Fellow, University of Strathclyde
[email protected]
Martin Caminada
Lecturer at Cardiff University
[email protected]
Work-integrated learning creates distinctive challenges for assessment. How do you fairly evaluate student competencies when they're working in diverse contexts with supervisors who may not be familiar with your frameworks? How do you ensure academic standards while staying flexible to the unpredictable nature of real work?
This webinar brings together practitioners from two universities to share how they've tackled these questions in practice.
- They explore key questions and design decisions around learning outcomes, assessment, supervision, and logistics, and
- they explain the approaches they've chosen and why.
Whether you're designing a new work-placement programme, refining an existing one, or considering SFIA as a framework, this session will give you practical insights and a set of guiding questions to work through with your own teams.
The session includes:
- An introduction to SFIA and its role in higher education
- Real examples from institutional practice
- Key questions to guide your own implementation decisions
- Space for discussion and Q&A
- Future developments
Fraser and Martin will also introduce a set of 21 guiding questions - developed from their experience of applying SFIA in higher education. These questions provide a structured way for academic teams to explore the key design choices involved in using SFIA to assess and support workplace learning.
The completed document offers practical guidance for education providers considering SFIA to support work-based elements of degree programmes such as placements, internships and degree apprenticeships. It draws on the experience of two UK institutions already using the framework.
It is important to note that the aim of this document is not to distinguish between any “right” and “wrong” ways of applying SFIA in higher education.
- It is also not the aim of the SFIA Foundation to provide any kind of accreditation of higher education providers who are applying SFIA.
The structure includes: an overview of two universities applying SFIA, a set of academic-focused questions with example approaches, and a final section outlining what the SFIA Foundation permits in this context.
They are also keen to hear from others and to build a community resource for sharing good practice in this area.