IT Fieldwork (Practicum) W24 - 200 hours
General
- Diploma; 2nd year
- 60 learners; individual projects
- 200 hours per learner
- Dates set by projects
- Learners apply to projects
Preferred companies
- 1/30 project matches
- Anywhere
- Academic experience
- Non profit, Large enterprise, Small to medium enterprise
- Technology, Any, It & computing
Categories
Skills
Overview
- Details
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Each year, students in the 2nd (final) year of their program are required to complete at least 200 hours of IT-related fieldwork in a mentored environment. The practicum course opens in January, but students looking for full-time placement generally expect to start in late April or early May. The qualifying time for the course must be completed before the middle of June, but this would not preclude any continuing employment by you.
The students will have completed a variety of web, database, programming, network, server, user interface, and systems design courses and practical projects. They have the fundamentals and some skills to apply, and they have the capacity and willingness to learn your business and processes.
While this can be an unpaid practicum, we would encourage employers to pay students at your companies entry level wage.
Start date for this opportunity:
- January 2024 (up to 60 students seeking placement)
We are looking for companies with a background in IT or someone with an IT-related qualification to mentor our learner candidates throughout the project.
- Learner skills
- Mobile app development, Ui/ux, Communication, Research, Problem solving with it
- Deliverables
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A student placed with your organization will deliver 200 hours of entry-level (or better) technical work in programming, systems design, web programming, mobile applications, networking, or technical support. Our students are usually motivated to do an excellent job as part of building their resumes and portfolios.
(My personal experience, from when I was in the software development world, was that this works like a 200-hour job interview. Almost every programmer I hired had been a practicum placement.)
Project Examples
Practicum placements vary in nature and scope from organization to organization: help desk, programmer, network technician, field technician, or a mixture of everything. The only real requirements is that the work be strongly IT related and that there is someone with an IT-related qualification who will be around to guide and provide feedback to the student.
In recent years, students have:
- created a data collection platform for a university research project. This involved database design, web development/programming, user-centred interface design, and user-experience design.
- Taken on a role as a help-desk/network support analyst at a company that specializes in remotely-managed data services. Their work was so well received that this student has been retained to fill the role on a continuing basis.
- Developed a mobile application for a California-based tech startup
Additional company criteria
Companies must answer the following questions to submit a match request to this experience:
Our organization has an IT Department or IT Lead that the student will work with.
Provide IT mentorship (as required) to the student for the duration of the placement. This is intended to be guidance and direction (not "hand-holding) in order to help the student make the bridge from academic study into the working world.
Complete two, short progress reports. The first is at 100 hours and the second is at the end of the practicum.
Be available for a quick exit interview with the instructor to follow up on the successes (and potential improvements) in the internship process.
Be available for a quick phone call with the instructor to initiate your relationship and confirm your scope in an appropriate fit for the internship.