Student Placements:
Three Weeks with Falkirk Council during July 2009
During July 2009, Falkirk Council played host to two girls from the Odenwald, Ina and Nicole, under the Council’s Student Placement initiative. Here’s part of their story with their placements with Cultural Services and Community Services where they were based at - Falkirk Library; Callendar House and The Falkirk Stadium.
Bed and breakfast was found locally in Falkirk for Ina and Nicole during their stay. They both had good English and their work placements were chosen to reflect the kind of work they wanted to do. Apart from work, members of the Odenwald Association met the girls socially and took them on outings to see some of our beautiful countryside. They visited the Falkirk Wheel, they took photographs at Culross, crossed the Forth Road Bridge from South Queensferry to North Queensferry and had a trip to the Trossachs. The girls also made trips by themselves, one of which involved a train trip to Edinburgh for an entire day of shopping!
Working with Cultural Services
Cultural Services have supported student placements as part of the area's twinning arrangement with the Odenwald for a few years now, with requests coming through the Provost's office. The Service looks at the individual student's interests and career goals and tries to place them appropriately within the organisation.
For example, the Council benefits from the placement programme by having additional support within the service and in this case, by placing the students at Callendar House during the peak tourist season, students with language skills can help enhance the visitor experience for foreign tourists, whilst the students get an opportunity to practice their English skills, see how a busy tourist venue operates and have a hands-on role in service delivery.
Ina and Nicole both had administrative experience, language skills, and Nicole had some experience of working with a travel agency, so the placements were tailored at Callendar House to reflect these skills. Over the 4 days they were with the Service, they contributed to the customer evaluation system by recording customer feedback on the electronic Survey Monkey database; they assisted the front of house and retail teams with welcoming and orienting visitors to Callendar House and visited other museum sites to see how they operated; they worked with the Archive staff on their Warrant Logging project; and they collated visitor statistics and fed these into the recording system.
They were supported by the Gift Shop Manager and Administration Assistant who both commented on how well Ina and Nicole progressed in their short time with the Service, in terms of their confidence in using their English language skills, and in their ability to undertake competently the tasks they were set.
Staff reported, “we are always pleased when we feel student placements have been mutually beneficial exchanges - and when the efforts we make to ensure the students have a good and fruitful experience during their time with us are rewarded by commitment from the student to get the most out of the placement opportunity”.
Community Services
Ina and Nicole worked in several parts of the Council's Community Services.
The Principal Economic Development Officer explained that short placements can be quite difficult as people need a lot of guidance at the start and there isn't much time to get them into a routine where they can work in a less supervised way. Ina and Nicole were very willing and able to take on quite a lot in the three days they worked in this area of Community Services from 13-15 July. In an effort to help give them a feel for the area, one of the tasks they were given was sorting out the stock of tourism leaflets, and they sent out various packs in the mail. They had already been to the Falkirk Wheel and round other parts themselves. They produced some documents and worked on consolidating a business database from several sources - this showed they were proficient with Microsoft packages. They also made a few phone calls which can be difficult until people have had time to learn about the office etc. and the sort of business language used. They were more competent on the phone and with spoken English generally than they probably realised!
They also did some translation work, including the new Bo'ness Area Guide which is part of the Bo'ness & Kinneil Railway leaflet. Translating this was both an intensive and time consuming piece of work, especially when so many words, phrases and names would be new to them. However they were determined to finish it.
Ina and Nicole’s confidence with English increased through their stay in the area and, thanks to and their valuable piece of work, there is now a translation available to hand out with the leaflet when taking German visitors round the Bo'ness area.
Thanks to staff of Cultural and Community Services for contributing information for this News item.
|
