Abstract:

Set on the north side of Dublin city, Killester College of Further Education (KCFE) is an Adult Education College offering Post Leaving Cert (PLC) courses to adults of all ages. Our courses are accredited by QQI at level 4, 5 and 6. Each of our 18 courses are made up of at least 8 components and must include a component called Work Experience. This mandatory module stipulates that each student must secure work placement in a workplace and attend one day each week for the academic year.

For certain courses work placement can prove very difficult to secure. To counter this ongoing issue the teaching staff and management of the college have been developing links with local employers in the Dublin area to establish formal work placement arrangements. Since May 2018 the college has established an internship model and has entered into formal agreements with a large IT solutions company, and international Investment Bank and a large Pharmacy Retail chain. These companies are currently providing our students with work placement one day per week.

During this process we have developed incentives to attract more employers to the internship model. These include larger blocks of time for the employer to avail of, IT training for the employees of the companies and an option for an annual online subscription to the college's learning materials.

Our paper will delve into the formal learning agreements we have established with these companies and the processes we use to attract new companies to the Internship model while we also give some detailed accounts of the students' experiences.

Keywords:

Internship Model, Reinforced Learning, Irish PLC, Work Placement.