 I'm Dale Bradley, I'm an assistant professor in the department of communication, pop culture and film. And the experiential learning course that I'm most involved with is the fourth year capstone course that's open to all of our students whether they're in communication, pop culture or film. We had a student who had an intern position with the Niagara region government and to do a little bit of extra work on a regional economic survey that was out and she was looking at the survey and helping to put stuff up online and all that kind of thing and she noticed that it didn't really address the 18 to 30 or so demographic in terms of labor in the region and she said well this should be part of a report right and the region agreed and asked us halfway through the summer because she was doing this in the summer but as halfway through the summer do you have more students who could work on this and so we gathered, just kind of picked folks that we thought might be good and we ended up with about 10 I think in total. We sent them over there and it was really successful and that got me thinking that some kind of course and not just a project in a course but an actual course for fourth year students that was oriented around this kind of thing, finding placements originally we were thinking more regional government, municipal government and all that kind of stuff and if we could to spread it out from there so we thought if we could get this going that would be great so we actually did manage to get it in as a late addition to the course bank towards the end of the summer so we really were flying blind at the beginning but we did manage to get through connections at the region some connections with small artistic and cultural organizations and media related marketing advertising those sorts of organizations in the region because given our department that's where our student skill set was so we managed to place I think the first year we had it went from the 10 that we had in the summer to 20 some odd and we managed to get placements government and both in government and in the industry and that proved to be really successful in terms of the placements but we noticed in talking with the students a fairly high level of anxiety about what would you call it the kind of the mundane do's and don'ts of the work environment so we thought well rather than just placing students which is what we did and it's more of a classic intern kind of program rather than just placing students in the next iteration of the course the next year we thought why don't we add onto this a course typical kind of kind of lecture course but driven not by us lecturing to them or me lecturing to them but by bringing guest speakers from various industries to talk about what it's like in those industries but then also some kind of 21st century work skills those kinds of intangible things that the students already possess in a lot of ways but don't realize it because that was one of the things when we talked to them about their anxieties is that they didn't think they had these kinds of skills when in fact they actually did they just didn't recognize it so in having all those guest speakers come in and kind of address those components of everyday work life we also included things like personality tests what kind of worker are you are you a sit back thinker type are you like a go getter kind of chaotic type all that kind of thing which they really seem to enjoy we thought we're going to build in a reflection piece so they I guess it was the second iteration of the course the proper course they used weekly reflections so they would write small they're very small journal entries at first they had a lot of difficulty doing it because they weren't used to writing that they're coming out of a three year three years of undergrad and they're used to writing research papers so when you're asking them to write it's very different and very kind of personal and reflective meta level consideration of their own experiences they just weren't used to it so by around Christmas they started to get the hang of it and we had a small reflection paper do around Christmas that's now become more of a question driven assignment because it takes a little while for these placements to really get going so they don't have a lot to reflect on earlier it's more in the second term and so they started to get the hang of that and then at the end we have a larger reflection piece where they look back on it and that's where the journal proved to be really really useful because when they look back on what they were saying in the first term about their kind of anxieties and I can't do this I don't have any skills I've learned a lot of stuff I've read a lot of books I wrote a lot of essays but they realize that they have things like research skills and interpersonal skills all that kind of stuff group skills presentation skills that they didn't recognize until or didn't recognize until we asked them to look for those things through both the workshops that we had with guest speakers and through those reflection papers and that was all really great and then in the third iteration of the course we added seminars to it as well and that I kind of referred to jokingly as work anonymous it's sort of based on the alcoholics anonymous model but kind of group therapy basically so we had there the workshops they had their placements but then we also had this space for the group and that's the third year then we were up to 30 35 I think students so it was proving to be popular with fourth year students but in that space it was kind of an open space we'd have some prompt questions but we'd get the students to talk about how they were feeling in all of their placements and then a lot of things came out of that and one of the biggest things being they all felt kind of nervous and anxious because they're thrown into a new environment they're not sure of their skills all that kind of thing so it was really useful for them not just to express that but to start trading around strategies and then they started in those seminars they would draw the links between like the personality profiles that they did and they would realize well actually I'm a more not introverted but I'm a quieter kind of research based person and I like a quieter kind of work environment and you know we would encourage them to say well that's the kind of thing you should mention that to your placement probably your placement supervisor and they learned that they could actually modify their positions to some degree other people realize they're the go getter chaotic type they need a lot of schedules and projects thrown at them and tight deadlines and all that but they all realized they were all different they all had these different kind of skills and that they had to be to some degree advocates once they realized this through the kind of reflection piece advocates for their own kind of work styles and kind of needs and desires in the workplace so that by the time that third iteration had gone we've added all of these components and they all seemed to be working so we had the kind of not lectures but workshop based component in the class with the guest speakers we had the more kind of open free form question prompted discussions in the seminars and they had their actual placements so all three of those working together I think really make for a robust experience because simply placing students they have these anxieties and these questions and they don't get addressed and they don't have a venue to do it and they're not exposed to skills that might help them deal with those kinds of anxieties so I would really you know if I was going to recommend something to somebody that would be something that I would recommend is if you can build in somehow it depends on the course if you're doing it just as an experiential project within a course it's a little different but because this one is a capstone course it's entirely based on a placement in that kind of scenario to work in those workshops and as well as the reflection and the kind of seminar where it's much more open and student driven and they can just express their concerns and I guess in relation to that another little bit of advice that I would have because this really drove the development of the course here over here we're always tweaking it and playing with it is to really trust and listen to the students and their experiences when they're in it because as much as it's based on skills and performance and doing things in a workplace so much of it this is what I've kind of come to discover so much of it is also based on how they feel I know that sounds a little bit new agey or something like that but it's the biggest obstacle to them feeling comfortable with themselves and with trying to find the kind of careers and work they want to be engaged with is for them to deal with those feelings and to actually deal with the anxiety I know it's not uncommon for folks to point out you know this is the age of anxiety for students in this kind of demographic and that really worked out well but we only figured that out because we were constantly sort of asking them about it and when we heard things back then we were trying to implement some solution to that either in the year if we could or then the next iteration of the process