Students studying engineering in universities are often offered a departmentally facilitated internship at some point in their program. In the UK this activity is referred to as placement and Engineering departments encourage and positively promote the placement process to students. Typically in the UK the placement lasts for 12 months, is taken between the 2nd and 3rd year of study with students placed in junior level engineering posts in a wide variety of working environments, mostly within England but with a significant number working in other countries. In program documentation, the advantages of placement are celebrated and attempts to quantify the learning outcomes achieved have been made. However, because of the wide variety of geographical and cultural locations, work environments and the faculty lack of day to day control once a student has been placed, it is difficult to write these learning outcomes from an evidence base. In this paper a qualitative approach has been used to illuminate the academic, personal and professional development of students resulting from the placement experience, based on the analysis of semi-structured student interview data. This paper reports upon the themes identified in the analysis and compares the results with those expected from the existing learning outcome statements.
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