Coaching in the WIL context

Work integrated learning comes in a few different flavours and one of the most common we see are internships and placements. The role of coaching in this type of environment is more conducive for a one on one conversation between a WIL partner or perhaps a supervisor and the student. I usually think that coaching in this setting is most useful when there are those moments of uncertainty for our students where they might just be struggling to understand how to go through a particular process or how to complete a particular task. There is then a moment which is created for coaching to take place. To not dive in and provide the solution straight away but to ask the student, 'How might you go about solving this issue?' By doing that it helps to develop confidence that, 'You know what, as a student I am capable of navigating these periods where I'm just not sure what the right answer is but I can at least try and work through it.' And as a back stop there, as a supervisor or as a WIL partner, you can then at least, if the problem still remains, you can then provide that answer. But providing that coaching moment, that ability to work through the problem is quite valuable for the learning for the student.

Project based WIL or work integrated learning is a little bit different from internships and placements. Placements and internships where students typically go out to organisations and work within that work setting. The difference with projects is that quite often that relationship is flipped. So we quite often have our WIL partners coming into the classroom or talking directly to students quite often on campus or perhaps through structured meetings. The main difference when it comes to coaching in this setting is that it can quite often be one industry partner or WIL partner talking to many students at once. So it's almost like an open question and answer framework but then it's more about judging what's going on in this particular team, this particular group or this particular class. What are the questions that you're hearing and the coaching framework that we discuss in this module allows you to ask the right questions to that class, to that group, to that team, to help them step through the problem, to step through the issues that they're facing collectively so that they can all learn from each other's questions and answers as they come in, in that setting.