BackUnifrog and T level placements

Here's how we are developing our existing Placements tool so that it fully supports placements done as part of T levels.

Our goal is to provide an intuitive and efficient experience for coordinators, students, employers and parents/guardians. Here are the changes that we've already put live, and also what is coming up before September 2024. 

All these changes will go live for everyone using our Placements tool.

WHAT WE’VE DONE ALREADY

• Is it a T level?
  
  Now when a student adds a placement, they're asked if it’s part of a T level. This means the system can flag it as part of a T-level, and it’s treated a little differently to a regular placement - more on this below!
   
• Student learning objectives
  
  Another new thing for when a student is adding a placement: they are now asked to add their learning objectives. We give them some guidance on how to come up with some good objectives (covering both professional behaviours and technical skills).
   
• Learning goals
  
  In the Permission form, the placement coordinator now has a field for the Learning goals for the placement. To help set these, coordinators can see what the student has said their learning objectives are, and what the employer has said for the overview of the placement.
   
• Sorting by T levels
  
  Now on the Manage page, placement coordinators can choose to only see students who have T level placements added. This makes it easier to manage these placements, and to spot if a T level student is missing a placement.
• End point assessments
  
  We’ve added the government’s suggested questions for the T level end point assessment to the Student reflection form, and the Employer feedback form, for example:
• No more ‘school’
  
  It’s a small thing, but to take into account that many colleges use Unifrog, we’ve removed most references on the tool to ‘school’, and where absolutely necessary, we say ‘school/college’.
   
• PDF downloads of the entire placement process
  
  For your record keeping, for a placement you can now download all the forms as one easy-to-store PDF. 
   

CHANGES THAT ARE COMING SOON

The changes below will be live well before September 2024. There are three main things: a Logbook where students can record the hours of placement they’ve done each week, the ability to record multiple check-ins, and a greatly improved placements contacts database (so it’s easier for you to help find placements for students in the future).

Logbook

This will be required for T level placements, but it will also be available for any non-T level placement longer than a week.

With the Logbook switched on: 

• Each Friday, students will be prompted to record how many hours of placement they did in the last week
• They’ll also record what went well and their aims for the coming week
• Afterwards, the employer will be prompted to confirm the hours that the student recorded

Coordinators will be able to track how many hours of placement each student has done so far, and will be able to nudge students who are missing Logbooks, as well as employers who haven’t confirmed the hours.
Check-ins

There are three main things for these. They will be super useful for T levels, but we will make the changes live for all placements.

1. Multiple check-ins
   
   At the moment, school/college staff can record one during-placement check-in. We're changing things so that they will be able to record multiple check-ins.
    
2. Drop downs for ratings
   
   In each check-in, school/college staff will have nine drop downs with which to rate students. The drop downs will be the same for every placement, and they’ll be optional. For each drop down, there will be three options: 'Needs improvement', 'Good' and 'Excellent'.
    
3. Check-in learning goals
   
   In each check-in, staff can tweak the learning goals for the placement, using as a starting point the learning goals that were saved in the previous stage of the process, and without changing the learning goals that have previously been saved.

Placement contacts

We are significantly developing the existing ‘Placement contacts’ system, so that you can:

• Add contacts manually or in bulk, without them first having to have hosted a placement on Unifrog.
   
• Edit placement contacts, including adding notes about them.
   
• Block placement contacts from hosting another placement.