The University of Hertfordshire is committed to providing opportunities for our students to gain accredited work experience.

The School of Creative Arts has put into place a variety of options to help facilitate short, medium and long-term work experiences related to your study that can be accredited within our Programmes of Study and this handbook has been produced to provide information and guidance in this area for both students and staff. It also provides links to other sources of useful information and documents.

Work experience can be defined and undertaken in a variety of ways but is essentially any form of ‘employment’ that a student may engage in during their time at university, be it on/off campus, full/part time, within industry or community settings, paid/volunteering, or toward professional enterprise development. Work-based and placement learning is not restricted to undertaking work experience or going on a placement only. It is primarily concerned with identifying relevant and appropriately assessed learning, expressed in the form of learning outcomes that can be linked to a work or placement experience. In short, if an experience is sufficiently related to the study area and can be recognised through assessment as something that contributes to the student’s learning or their preparation as a graduate, it may be credited with a module, part of a module or a special award title, within the student’s Programme of Study.

It should be noted upfront that although our courses have been designed to support a variety of options for accredited work experience to be undertaken, and although many staff will be actively seeking placement opportunities for our students, our courses and our academic staff themselves are not ‘placement providers’.

Our definition of work experience in the School of Creative Arts is broad, and our approach is in tune with our sector(s). This means that staff may be willing to consider work experience proposals from students that take a variety of ‘non-traditional’ forms, including the setting up of their own business, engagement with the commissioning of artistic work, etc.

Academic staff will actively support students in this area through guidance, and students are very much encouraged to engage in work based activities as part of their study – to be enterprising and self motivated, to seek out opportunities, and to make the most of the wider support offered by the university, for example, the Careers, Employment and Enterprise Service.

All students MUST complete the ‘Work Experience Agreement Form’, apart from those looking to do a long-term placement Sandwich placement year. Students undertaking a long-term Sandwich placement must instead complete different forms and agreements available by contacting the Placements team directly at placements@herts.ac.uk