With UROP student Carrie Philp
Continuing my placement showcase series, I interviewed Carrie Philp about her experiences during her UROP placement and how she used social media to recruit students for her project.
A third year Psychology student, Carrie, who only heard about the opportunity at the last minute, says she has learnt a lot over the 8 weeks on placement:
“I have been conducting a piece of research in collaboration with the Careers, Placement and Experience Centre, located on the University Campus. The aim of the research is to investigate the views and opinions of students who have and haven’t used the careers services, and to investigate how they could be improved to meet the needs of the students.”“As part of this research I conducted an online questionnaire. I used Facebook to recruit my participants as it was a cheap and easy way to reach a diverse population, whilst ensuring that I was only gathering students from the University. I posted my advertisements on various academic and social group pages, and gathered a sufficient number of participants for my survey.”
“Completing this project has allowed me to develop my social media and computer skills. Whilst before I had a working knowledge of programs such as Word and Excel, I now have a more extensive knowledge of their functions. I learnt a lot about how to conduct a piece of scientific research from start to finish, and these skills will help me on other projects, such as my dissertation and independent projects. I have found my project to be a very useful and motivating experience.”
Carrie has been working with the University’s Careers, Placement and Experience Centre
Carrie presented her findings to the Directors of Teaching & Learning last week in the presence of Vice Chancellor Sir David Bell. She did this to ensure that the findings and recommendations from her research are fed back to the University. One of the ideas that Carrie discussed are to have student Employability Ambassadors. I mentioned to Carrie that I had seen a presentation at the RAISE conference where two students from Newcastle University had a very positive response to their Employability Ambassador scheme.
I have really enjoyed speaking to students in a varied range of placements. Hearing about positive placement experiences and how this has aided their digital skills development has been not only been stimulating, but has also encouraged me to reflect on my own skills development.
