Government Coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance

Dear Placement Students,
We hope that you are all keeping safe and well and we strongly advise that you adhere to the
latest Government Coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance (www.gov.uk/coronavirus). If you find
that there are any issues in respect to your ability to do this, please Contact: 3P On-Placement
Support Team 3Pstudentsupport@aston.ac.uk for further advice and support.
Placement Assessment: The Reflections Portfolio
This important element of the placement assessment requires six reflective pieces of work where
you answer question relating to your work placement experience.
If you have had to leave your placement early as a result of the current lockdown, we recognise
that some of you might not feel as if you have had the opportunity consider a good range of
instances or events upon which to ‘reflect’ in your work placement.
If this is the case, you are able to use examples from your experiences outside your work
placement, e.g. in other part-time work or your social and study experiences to comment on or
answer (reflectively) the questions.
Placement Assessment: The Work Based Presentation Project:
The requirement to complete a Presentation Project where you are tasked to investigate and
‘organisational issue or processes’ will remain a required element of your placement assessment.
The current partial lockdown interventions will undoubtedly affect the work towards completing
your Placement Presentation Project and we would like to reassure you that we are mindful of the
circumstances and the impact this will have on your plans for investigate work and analysis the
‘issue or process’ and delivery of the presentation itself.
We would like you to approach this as you would any project you were tasked to undertake in the
workplace and work within the constraints of this new working environment. As said earlier, we will
be mindful of the restrictions posed and will take this into consideration when assessing the project
as well as the initiatives you have taken to adapt. ‘ Adaptability’ is a key employability
competency which many graduate employers seek from new recruits. Where better to
demonstrate this than in this employability focused element of your degree programme?
The deadline for this Presentation Project is on 25th June 2020 so you have time to consider the
implications to your initial plans and outlines and have the time to adapt your plans, just as many
individuals in the workplace are currently having to with their own work projects and commitments.
Some suggestions on how to proceed:
Speak to your Placement supervisor if you feel you need to amend or modify you
presentation:
Some of you might alter the focus of you project to how well an organisation can adapt to
changing circumstances – issues such procedures in place to deal with:

If you are planning to change the focus of your project, please ensure that you discuss with /
inform your Placement supervisor.
Amendment to investigative work and analysis of the organisational issue or process:
Some of you had planned to undertake some primary research through interviews, questionnaires
or focus groups. The current situation of partial lockdown will clearly impact this.

o SoGOSurvey
o SurveyMonkey
o Typeform.
These are just suggestions and there are other applications you might prefer to use. The ones
suggested above all have free versions which have more than sufficient functionality to undertake
some basic primary research.
Please remember that the requirement to provide both an ‘INFORMATION SHEET’ and ‘PRIVACY
NOTICE’ to all participants still stands for any primary research.
If collecting primary research is not possible remotely or your placement has been paused or
ended, you can use secondary data to support your investigation. Aston University Library is still
functioning online and advice on navigating the Placement LibGuide and Business Databases can
be found in the slides uploaded to the Using Business Databases to Support your Placement
Assessments content within the Placement Assessments area of the My ABS Placements Site
2019-20 Blackboard site.
Primary research is not included the marking scheme so any changes to your approach which
might now not included primary research will not impact on the marking of your Presentation
Project. If primary research has already been cleared as part of the Project Outline & Ethical
Approval submission there is no need to resubmit for the absence of primary research or ask
permission if for this change of approach in the final Presentation Project. Any major changes to
the project focus can be resubmitted to your Placement Tutor by email by local agreement (i.e.
deadlines that work for both parties) as advised above before commencing the revised project.
Delivery and recording of you presentation
There are many options available to you depending on the device you use for recording the
presentation. Smartphones and digital cameras were the most popular last year but students
also used integrated webcams in their laptops plus regular webcams positioned to capture the
presentation full profile or head & shoulders.

 Use an online application such as Loom to record presentation with you visible onscreen with
your slides: https://www.loom.com/ & you will find this YouTube video helpful in considering
or applying this option: How to Share Ideas Online with Loom (#GoingRemote)
Loom videos can be downloaded as a MP4 Video (.mp4) by selecting the download option in
the viewer menu beneath the video (first of the 4 options).

slide show with narration and slide timings plus you can Turn your presentation into a video
for upload to Blackboard as an MPEG-4 video file (.mp4) or a .wmv file.
 Deliver the presentation using MS Teams. This will allow you to deliver the presentation and
have yourself visible on the screen. See below a link to a YouTube video on how MS teams
can be used to deliver a PowerPoint presentation: Show PowerPoint slides in a meeting with
Microsoft Teams
Please ensure that you are recording the meeting (see link below on how to do this): Record
a meeting in Teams
The final recording can be downloaded from the MS Teams Stream webpage as a MP4
Video (.mp4) by selecting the download option from the horizontal ellipsis (…) menu. More
information on this function can be found in the Play and share a meeting recording in
Teams Download a meeting recording webpage.
Microsoft Teams is available as part of the Office 365 Web Apps available to students from the
Aston University webpage: Home Software
All above options create video files which can be uploaded to Blackboard (via the Kaltura mashup option within the assignment). We strongly advise you practice creating video files so are
familiar with the software functionality, i.e. make sure you know how to create and download a
presentation recording before you attempt this for your final presentation. Just to note you can
utilise the functionality of collaboration software such as MS Teams and share recordings as
links or files on cloud services like OneDrive or Dropbox with fellow students as part of your
preparation.
In the meantime, please all stay safe and well and remember that as the deadline for submission
of your Work Based Presentation Project and Reflective Portfolio is 12pm (noon/UK time)
25th June 2020. Whilst the submission date remains unaltered, and we encourage all students to
submit, students can submit up to five working days after the deadline without penalty (12pm
noon/UK time 2nd July 2020), if required due to mitigating circumstances.
Best wishes
Frances
Frances Rosairo FCCA
Lecturer. ABS Academic Lead: Placement Year

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