Guidance for study time off
The Foundation Degree in Government is a work based programme where learning is integrated with the student's workload, and this is reflected in a reduced need for time away from the job for traditional study activities. The programme has been designed to keep time out of the office to a minimum by capturing the learning which is done in the workplace.
Regular work or study time?
Agreeing assignment
Studying module's learning outcomes, identifying appropriate work activities and making arrangements as appropriate in discussion with mentor and line manager, checking with tutor. Time taken will vary depending on availability of opportunities. Should be seen as part of normal staff development work.
Doing the work
Normal part of duties, including any training and reading which help with performance of the work. Should be seen as normal work
Keeping a record
It is recommended that student's keep a journal of relevant learning and thoughts as well as collecting items which could be included in a portfolio to be submitted as part of their assignment. This work should be integrated with regular work. Taking this approach is good practise and should benefit performance.
Wider reading
Students are expected to find a variety of perspectives on their work from a variety of sources. This is an important element of the programme. While some of this may be seen as part of reading students might legitimately do as part of their job, they might also see it as of general interest. It's probably reasonable to expect students to take responsibility for finding the time for this part of the work .
Preparing their assignments for submission
Assembling a portfolio and writing a reflective essay. Discussions with tutor. Students will be expected to meet submission deadlines and it is in the employer's interests to make sure they do. While each student's approach to completing assignments will vary, employers should give them time away from regular work to do this. A normal working day should be enough to write and prepare an assignment for submission, though not always taken as a single block.
Attending workshops/other events
Apart from the induction workshop, there is no requirement to attend other events; nonetheless, we hope to arrange support workshops and students themselves may identify other learning opportunities.
Examples
Pat attended the Induction workshop (2 days) and followed up with several hours reading (revisiting the materials, browsing the VLE and looking up some of the references) - finding the time for reading in the margins at work, while travelling and at home. Pat's line manager agreed a few hours on Friday morning if things weren't busy (which was easy from an operational point of view) when Pat could come in late or go to the department's library. This happened every two or three weeks. Pat also had two mentor meetings and a number of conversations/emails with the tutor to resolve issues/answer questions, these were in work time. As the submission deadline approached, Pat had two consecutive Friday afternoons off to complete the assignment and spent a further hour the following week making some minor changes following feedback from the tutor.
For Understanding Government, there was no significant work that was directly relevant so Pat did a lot of reading outside of work, negotiated time to complete some research and tasks in work (which helped understand the organisation) and took a day off to write up the assignment.
For the Customers and Stakeholders, Pat talked the module through with the mentor and identified current work that was relevant, met with her line manager to discuss how to make sure she was involved with appropriate bits of work; the line manager also was able to give her useful background information and suggested she should meet with various other people. All this was done in work time. Pat spent about 10 minutes a day before she went home making notes in a learning journal. After a chat with her tutor, she contacted some fellow students and subsequently met up with a small group (and was allowed some time for this). Again she used a few Friday mornings for library work and took one full day to write the assignment. After comments from her tutor, she needed a further half day to make changes.
For Managing Resources, she arranged to spend a day in Finance and three days in a the PPM support office, after a gap she asked if she could meet with a fellow student who had nearly finished the assignment, followed this with some reading time and then took a day off to write up the assignment.
The rest of the modules proceeded along similar lines.