Practera News

Imagine If Every Student Had Access to Real Industry Experience

July 1, 2026 Practera NewsLeave a comment

Imagine If Every Student Had Access to Real Industry Experience in 2026

How universities can expand work-based learning without adding to the team’s workload

Work-based learning can scale when universities move beyond relying only on bespoke placement models and add repeatable, supported industry project pathways. The goal is not to remove the human parts of employability learning. It is to protect them: authentic briefs, feedback, reflection, inclusive access, evidence of skill development and meaningful partner engagement. That is the conversation Practera is taking to the Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026. As the sector asks what the future of careers and employability should look like, one question sits underneath many of the programme themes:
How can universities give more students access to real industry experience without adding unsustainable pressure to careers teams, academics or employer partners?

Conference context: Practera will be at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 to discuss how universities can scale inclusive, meaningful industry experience through structured live industry projects, supported delivery models and measurable skill development.

work-based learning

What is Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 about?

Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 is a higher education conference focused on the future of graduate employability, careers provision and student opportunity. The programme brings together careers and employability leaders, educators, employer-engagement teams and sector partners to discuss future jobs, inclusive careers provision, international students, AI, work-based learning, placements, data and embedded employability. Practera’s contribution sits inside that agenda: how universities can make real industry experience more accessible without adding unsustainable workload. For registration, programme and access details, use the official Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 page.

Practera at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026

Practera will be at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 as a conference participant, parallel-session contributor and awards sponsor. Join our Practera parallel session on Thursday 2 July, 12:15–13:00 in LT2, where we will discuss how universities can make real industry experience more accessible and scalable through structured live industry projects, supported delivery models and evidence of student skill development. Practera is also sponsoring the Inclusivity and Opportunity Award at the Graduate Futures Awards presentation ceremony. That sponsorship reflects a broader belief behind our programmes: access to meaningful industry experience should not depend on a student’s network, location, timetable, confidence or ability to secure a traditional placement. If you are exploring inclusive access, scalable work-based learning or a low-risk pilot for live industry projects, come and speak with us at the conference.

Why this question belongs at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026

The Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 programme is full of the right signals: future jobs, inclusive careers provision, international students, employer engagement, career confidence, work-based learning, placements, data, AI in guidance, curriculum design and embedded employability. Those themes are connected. For many institutions, they point to one practical design challenge. Students need more than advice. They need chances to practise, reflect and produce evidence of capability. Employers want graduates who can communicate, solve problems and contribute sooner. Careers and employability teams want to widen access without lowering quality. Academic teams want authentic learning that fits curriculum, assessment and workload realities. That is why Practera’s conference question is deliberately practical:
Imagine if every student had access to industry experience.
Many institutions are already working towards that ambition. The next question is how to design a model that can work for hundreds or thousands of learners, not only a small cohort with unusually strong staff support or employer capacity.

The practical challenge is matching ambition with delivery capacity

Traditional placements remain valuable. They give students exposure to workplace culture, expectations and networks. But placements alone are difficult to scale across every discipline and every student group. The constraints are familiar:
  • Not enough placement seats for every learner
  • High coordination load for careers, placements and academic teams
  • Variable employer supervision capacity
  • Uneven student access because of work, caring, travel, visa, confidence or network barriers
  • Limited evidence of skill development beyond completion or satisfaction
  • Difficulty connecting experience to curriculum and assessment
When institutions try to scale by simply adding more opportunities, the workload grows with the ambition. More employers need onboarding. More students need support. More exceptions need handling. More data needs reporting. More quality assurance is needed. That is why the better question is not “How do we find more placements?” It is:
What delivery model lets more students complete meaningful, assessable, industry-connected work without overwhelming the institution?
This is where scalable work-integrated learning becomes important. blogimages Mesa de trabajo 1 copy 3

What do we mean by real industry experience?

Real industry experience does not have to mean every student sitting inside an employer organisation for weeks or months. In higher education, it can include placements, internships, work-integrated learning, work-based learning, live briefs, virtual internships, capstones, employer challenges, consultancy projects and community partner projects. The common feature is authenticity. Students should work on a real or realistic challenge, with a clear stakeholder, meaningful constraints, professional-style deliverables, feedback and reflection. They should leave with evidence they can explain to an employer: what problem they worked on, what skills they practised, what decisions they made and what they learned. For many universities, live industry projects are a practical bridge between traditional placements and classroom-only employability education. They can be short, structured, online or hybrid, discipline-relevant and easier to repeat across cohorts.

A better benchmark: access, quality and workload

A scalable employability model has to satisfy three tests at once.

1. Access

Can more students take part, including students who may not be able to access traditional placements easily? This includes international students, commuter students, working students, students with caring responsibilities, students with disability, neurodivergent students, first-in-family students and students in disciplines where employer placement supply is limited.

2. Quality

Does the experience still build employability skills, not just activity volume? A scalable model needs authentic tasks, clear milestones, learner support, partner input, feedback, reflection and assessment.

3. Workload

Can the institution run the model repeatedly without relying on heroic manual coordination? Sustainable scale needs templates, structured workflows, partner-ready briefs, clear communications, analytics, intervention points and delivery support.
Inclusive employability is not only about inviting more students to apply. It is about designing experiences that more students can realistically complete. A scalable model should help students practise skills such as problem framing, teamwork, communication, stakeholder awareness, research, analysis, project management, digital capability and professional judgement. Strong skill development in work-based learning depends on more than activity volume. If quality disappears, scale becomes a vanity metric. This is where many good employability ideas stall. A pilot works because one person pushes hard. Then the model becomes too heavy to repeat. The best model is not the one with the biggest promise. It is the one the institution can run again next term.

The practical model: a managed industry project pilot

For conference delegates, the most useful next step may not be a large transformation project. It may be a focused pilot that proves what scalable industry experience could look like in their context. A practical pilot should answer five questions:
  1. Which students need access first?
  2. What kind of industry or community challenge will feel authentic and manageable?
  3. What skills should students practise and evidence?
  4. What support will learners, educators and partners need?
  5. What data will show whether the model worked?
Practera’s low-cost pilot offer is designed around this logic. It gives educators a way to test a structured virtual industry project with a manageable cohort before committing to a broader institutional rollout. A strong pilot should include:
  • A defined student cohort
  • A short, clear project timeline
  • Real or realistic industry briefs
  • Structured learner milestones
  • Workshops or guided support
  • Feedback loops
  • Reflection prompts
  • Skills and career readiness evidence
  • Practical reporting for the institution
The point is not to prove that every problem is solved in two weeks. The point is to give a university a low-risk way to see how authentic industry experience could scale when the design and delivery model are already structured.

Why AI makes this more urgent

AI is changing graduate work, but it is also changing employability education. Students can use AI to draft, research, summarise, analyse and prototype. But that does not automatically make them employable. They still need to know what to ask, what to verify, what evidence matters, how to collaborate, how to communicate uncertainty and how to apply judgement in context. That is why AI literacy belongs inside authentic work-based learning, not only inside tool training. A student can learn prompting in a workshop. AI-ready employability grows when students use AI responsibly in service of a real brief, then explain their reasoning, evidence and decisions. For careers and employability teams, this creates a double challenge. They need to help students prepare for AI-shaped work while also using scalable models that do not overload staff. Structured industry projects can help with both. blogimages Mesa de trabajo 1 copy

Where Practera fits

Practera for educators helps universities design, deliver and scale experiential learning programmes, including live industry projects, virtual internships, work-integrated learning, work-based learning and employability programmes. The conference banners say it simply: scale real industry experiences across your institution, and scale work-based learning without scaling workload. That matters because the limiting factor is often not ambition. It is delivery infrastructure. Practera supports the parts that make scale possible:
  • End-to-end programme management services
  • Experiential learning delivery platform
  • Industry partner and live brief sourcing
  • Bespoke learning solutions for diverse learners
  • Live feedback, skills tracking and analytics tools
  • UK and global experience models
  • Templates and repeatable programme structures
For universities, this means industry experience can move from a small, high-effort pilot to a repeatable model for employability learning. Practera will also be at rGraduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026. Join our parallel session on Thursday 2 July, 12:15–13:00 in LT2, or come and speak with us at the conference if you are exploring inclusive access, scalable work-based learning or a practical pilot for live industry projects. Practera is also sponsoring the Inclusivity and Opportunity Award at the Graduate Futures Awards presentation ceremony.

A conference checklist for employability leaders

If you are attending Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026, use the conference to test your own institutional model.
Ask:
  • Which students currently miss out on meaningful work-based learning?
  • Which employability experiences depend too heavily on manual coordination?
  • Where do employers want to help, but need a lower-friction way to participate?
  • Which skills do students need to evidence more clearly?
  • Where could live briefs or virtual industry projects complement placements?
  • What data would help careers teams, academic teams and senior leaders see impact?
  • What pilot could run next term without creating a new workload problem?
The answer does not need to be a full institutional redesign. It can start with one cohort, one model and one clear measure of success.

Common mistakes to avoid

Mistake 1: Treating access as the same thing as scale

A programme can be technically available to many students and still be hard for many students to complete. Real scale needs inclusive design, clear support and realistic participation models.

Mistake 2: Counting opportunities instead of measuring learning

More opportunities do not automatically create better employability outcomes. Students need to practise skills, receive feedback, reflect and produce evidence.

Mistake 3: Asking employers to carry the whole learning experience

Employers and community partners are valuable, but they should not be expected to supervise every learner like an employee. A structured model protects partner time while still creating authentic input.

Mistake 4: Scaling without delivery infrastructure

If every cohort requires a fresh operational build, the model will struggle. Repeatable templates, workflows, communications and analytics are what make scale sustainable.

Mistake 5: Leaving the pilot too vague

A pilot should be small, but not loose. It needs a target cohort, a timeline, success measures, learner support, partner expectations and a clear decision point after delivery.

Practical next step for Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 delegates

If your institution is exploring how to scale work-based learning or industry experience, start with a focused pilot. Practera’s low-cost Practera Pilot gives universities a way to explore what digitally enabled, live industry projects could look like for their students without starting with a large procurement or transformation programme. Use it to test:
  • Student appetite and completion
  • Quality of project experience
  • Skills and confidence growth
  • Staff workload
  • Partner engagement
  • Reporting and evidence needs
  • Fit with curriculum or co-curricular employability strategy
Then decide what should scale.

Ready to test scalable industry experience?

Start with a focused, low-risk pilot that helps your institution explore live industry projects, learner support and measurable employability outcomes. Explore the low-cost Practera Pilot

Conclusion

Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 is asking the right kind of question: imagine if employability provision could be more inclusive, more connected and more future-facing. Practera’s version of that question is specific:
Imagine if every student had access to real industry experience.
The answer is not simply more placements, more events or more content. It is a delivery model that protects access, quality and workload at the same time. For universities ready to explore that model, the next step is simple: sign up for the low-cost Practera Pilot through the Educators Portal, meet us at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026, or start a conversation about how a structured industry project could work in your context. blogimages Mesa de trabajo 1 copy 2

Conference FAQ

What is happening at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026

Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 brings together higher education careers, employability, academic and employer-engagement audiences to discuss the future of graduate outcomes and opportunity. The programme includes themes such as future jobs, inclusive careers provision, international students, AI in guidance, work-based learning, placements, data and embedded employability. Practera will be part of that conversation through its parallel session on Thursday 2 July, 12:15–13:00 in LT2, and by sponsoring the Inclusivity and Opportunity Award.

What is Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 about?

Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 is about how universities, employers and sector partners can better support students into meaningful graduate futures. For Practera, the most relevant thread is how institutions can make real industry experience more accessible, structured and measurable without creating unsustainable workload for educators, careers teams or employer partners.

How do I access Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026?

For registration, programme and delegate access details, use the official Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 page. If you are attending, you can also meet Practera at the conference or join our parallel session on Thursday 2 July, 12:15–13:00 in LT2.

What is Practera’s role at Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026?

Practera is participating in Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 as a sponsor and contributor to the sector conversation on inclusive employability. Practera is running a parallel session on Thursday 2 July, 12:15–13:00 in LT2, and is sponsoring the Inclusivity and Opportunity Award at the Graduate Futures Institute Annual Conference 2026 Awards presentation ceremony. Our focus is on practical ways to help universities widen access to meaningful industry experience through structured programmes, live industry projects, supported delivery and measurable skills evidence.

FAQ

How can universities scale work-based learning without increasing workload?

Universities can scale work-based learning by using repeatable project templates, structured learner workflows, clear partner roles, digital delivery, feedback loops, analytics and delivery support. The goal is to reduce bespoke administration while preserving authentic learning, reflection and evidence of skills.

What is a scalable industry experience programme?

A scalable industry experience programme gives students access to real or realistic workplace challenges through a structured model that can repeat across cohorts. It may include live briefs, virtual internships, work-integrated learning, work-based learning, capstones or industry projects.

Can live industry projects complement placements?

Yes. Live industry projects can complement placements by giving more students access to authentic workplace challenges when traditional placement seats are limited. They are especially useful for large cohorts, interdisciplinary learning and students who face access barriers.

What should universities measure in a work-based learning pilot?

Useful measures include participation, completion, student confidence, skill development, quality of deliverables, partner feedback, learner engagement, staff workload, equity of access and evidence students can use in career conversations.

How does Practera support work-based learning at scale?

Practera supports universities with experiential learning programme design, industry partner and live brief sourcing, learner workflows, workshops, feedback, skills tracking, analytics and delivery services for scalable industry projects, virtual internships and employability programmes.

What is the Practera low-cost pilot?

The Practera low-cost pilot is a practical way for educators to test a structured virtual industry project with students before scaling a broader programme. It is designed to help institutions explore authentic industry experience, learner support and measurable employability outcomes with lower risk.

Launching Horizons at AGCAS 2025: Empowering Employability for All

May 14, 2025 Practera NewsLeave a comment

Practera is proud to be the Headline Sponsor of the AGCAS Annual Conference 2025, taking place on 17–18 June at Newcastle University. As a headline sponsor, our goal is to support meaningful dialogue and action on the theme “Employability for All.” A mission that aligns directly with the launch of our new sector-wide initiative: the Horizons Programme UK.

The Horizons Programme UK has been developed as a strategic, scalable, and inclusive solution to address one of higher education’s most pressing challenges: providing equitable access to meaningful work experience opportunities for undergraduate students from Widening Participation (WP) backgrounds.

Addressing the Work Experience Gap in Widening Participation

Graduate employability is increasingly dependent on more than just academic achievement. Students now need to demonstrate experience, confidence, and transferable skills to secure employment post-graduation. For students from WP backgrounds, however, access to professional experience often remains limited. The reasons range from geographic and financial constraints to a lack of social capital, professional networks, and flexible opportunity structures.

A 2021 King’s College London study found that WP students frequently underestimate the value of work-integrated learning, often due to a lack of exposure or encouragement. As a result, many students miss the critical early experiences that build career confidence and lead to long-term outcomes.

The Horizons Programme UK is designed to intervene in this gap by providing introductory, project-based professional experience at scale. It is more than a virtual internship. It is a model for inclusive work-integrated learning tailored to the structural realities of WP students.

Introducing the Horizons Programme UK

The Horizons Programme UK is a virtual, national programme that enables undergraduate students from WP backgrounds to participate in short-term, real-world consulting projects with industry partners. The projects are designed to build critical employability skills, problem solving, communication, teamwork, and project management while boosting self-efficacy and awareness of career pathways.

This UK employability programme offers a delivery model that:

  • Removes geographic and logistical barriers through fully virtual participation
  • Aligns with academic schedules, allowing students to balance learning and work
  • Provides scaffolding and support from trained mentors and educators
  • Offers measurable learning outcomes aligned to institutional KPIs and OfS frameworks
  • Is cost-effective and scalable for institutions without requiring large internal teams

Each student cohort is placed in a small team and matched with a real client project. Over two to three weeks, students complete defined deliverables, receive feedback, and engage in structured reflection. The result is a high-impact learning experience that contributes directly to graduate employability.

AGCAS CTA to Horizon 2

Current University Partners

Horizons is already supported by a diverse consortium of UK universities committed to equitable employability. Founding partners include:

These institutions represent a cross-section of regions, groupings, and missions, united by a shared goal: to deliver impactful work experience to underserved learners in a scalable, collaborative way.

Universities 1

Official Launch at AGCAS Annual Conference 2025

Horizons will formally launch during a featured session at the AGCAS Annual Conference 2025:

  • Session Title: Horizons Programme UK Launch
  • Date: Tuesday, 17 June 2025
  • Time: 2:45 PM
  • Location: Room FDC.G.06, Newcastle University
  • Speaker: Kate Daubney, Practera Advisory Board Member and Chair of the Horizons Programme Governance Group

If you are attending AGCAS, we invite you to join the session and visit our exhibition booth. Meet the team, view the platform, and see how your institution can become part of the next Horizons cohort starting in July 2025.

Why It Matters for UK Higher Education

The Office for Students (OfS) continues to emphasise outcomes, equity, and employability in its Access and Participation Plan requirements. With limited resources, many institutions are seeking ways to offer scalable employability initiatives for universities that align with these goals without overstretching their teams.

Horizons provides a model that:

  • Directly supports undergraduate career support strategies
  • Demonstrates institutional impact on social mobility and inclusion
  • Aligns to TEF, OfS, and Access Plan goals
  • Enhances relationships with employers and external partners
  • Prepares students for placements, graduate roles, or further internships

By offering a programme that delivers inclusive work-integrated learning at scale, institutions can increase access and impact simultaneously.

What Makes Horizons Unique?

Compared to traditional internship models or employability workshops, Horizons offers a structured alternative with meaningful advantages:

  • It is designed for early-year students who are often excluded from more competitive internships
  • It is virtual, meaning it can include students with caregiving duties, disabilities, or those living in regional or rural locations
  • It uses real, client-driven projects from industry and the community
  • It is technology-enabled, using the Practera platform to streamline onboarding, delivery, feedback, and reporting
  • It is backed by a national community of practice focused on quality, reflection, and continuous improvement

Evidence of Impact

Practera-supported programmes have delivered over 100,000 learner experiences globally. In recent student surveys across our UK and Australian programmes:

  • 92 percent of participants reported increased career confidence
  • 89 percent improved their teamwork and communication skills
  • 87 percent felt more job-ready

Horizons builds on this proven model by tailoring it for WP students and UK institutions.

Supporting University Staff and Careers Teams

Horizons is co-delivered with institutional staff and designed to complement existing services, not replace them. Careers, Widening Participation, Employability, and Academic departments can all benefit from:

  • High-quality virtual work experiences that require limited facilitation time
  • Insightful analytics and outcomes reporting
  • Opportunities to embed authentic learning in modules, bootcamps, or standalone initiatives
  • Cost-sharing models and subsidised student places to enable sustainability

Book a time to speak with the team at AGCAS: https://go.practera.com/agcas-practera-2025

Looking Ahead: The Future of Inclusive Employability

The graduate employability landscape is evolving. Employers are placing greater value on real-world experience, adaptability, and applied problem-solving. For WP students, structured support into these opportunities can be a defining moment.

With growing interest from both institutions and students, Horizons is positioned to be the UK’s leading platform for inclusive, introductory work-based learning. By focusing on equity, flexibility, and national collaboration, the programme offers a new standard for what employability for all can look like.

If your institution shares the mission of widening access and delivering scalable impact, we would love to collaborate.

Visit the programme site: https://go.practera.com/horizons-educator-portal

Or email us to learn more: info@practera.com

We are delighted to be welcoming Kate Daubney PFHEA FRSA to the Practera Team

September 4, 2023 Practera News2 Comments

We are delighted to be welcoming Kate Daubney PFHEA FRSA to the Practera Team

We are delighted to be welcoming Dr. Kate Daubney PFHEA FRSA to Practera as a UK based member of our Advisory Board. Kate is an eminent senior executive and thought leader in Careers & Employability, recently finishing a role as Director of the Careers Group, University of London, and prior to that roles as Head of Careers & Employability at King’s College London and the University of Chester.

In her role, Kate will be supporting careers service and academic colleagues to explore their strategic and operational aspirations for work-based learning, and helping Practera create impactful and effective partnerships with institutions to achieve those aspirations.


Kate said “I first heard about Practera at the NAGCAS annual conference in Perth in 2019, where they presented on their collaboration with UNSW’s Business School, and as an educator I was really impressed by the pedagogical credibility of their work experience model, and their approach to academic and student partnership. We quickly became an early UK adopter of Practera while I was Head of Careers & Employability at King’s College London, where that pedagogical credibility was an essential element in our broader credibility as a service. Since then I’ve continued to be impressed by the way in which Practera focus on skill development – which is a priority in my strategic approaches to careers and employability education – and by how their different programmes support students at varying stages of career readiness. I am delighted to be working with Beau Leese, Jane Hallett and the broader team at Practera.”

Practera Co-founder & CEO Beau Leese said “we are delighted that Kate as a former customer and internationally recognised leader in Careers & Employability will be working with Practera as we build partnerships with leading Universities in the UK.” 

 

Northeastern University partners with Practera to drive digital experiential learning

September 7, 2020 Practera NewsLeave a comment
Kenneth Henderson Chancellor & Senior Vice President Learning at Northeastern University

Northeastern University Chancellor Ken Henderson will be the keynote speaker on Wednesday 9 September at the Melbourne Edtech summit, interviewed by The Australian Education Editor in Chief, Tim Dodd.

Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Northeastern is a global leader in experiential learning. It’s Co-op / internship program is one of the largest in the US with 27,000 students across 10 campuses and 3100 corporate partners around the world.

Professor Henderson will talk about how the future of co-operative education will be enabled by edtech – more digital, experiential, modular and lifelong, with new digital models bringing educators and employers together to service students from highschool through university and throughout their careers.

As part of its vision, Northeastern University has partnered with Australian experiential learning edtech Practera. Practera provides a flexible experiential learning platform delivering solutions from;

  • digital projects for high school students with the City of Boston
  • remote internships with a range of Community Colleges as part of a National Science Foundation project, and
  • corporate training through task first feedback & mentoring in the flow of work.

As well as being a customer and partner, Northeastern led Practera’s recent investment round to accelerate Practera’s rapid growth in the US, alongside existing investor Main Sequence Ventures.

Wes Sonnenreich, co-founder and co-CEO of Practera now based in Boston, “We are excited at the opportunity to work with Northeastern University more closely and bring to life our shared vision of creating opportunity through experiential learning. We are proud that we have developed a platform primarily in Australia, which leading US experiential learning thought leaders are now recognising as best in class.”

Register for the free virtual summit.

Professor Laura-Anne Bull joins Practera to drive Academic Partnerships.

August 16, 2020 Practera NewsLeave a comment
Laura-Anne brings 15 years of Senior University Executive experience to Practera.

Practera is pleased to welcome Professor Laura-Anne Bull to the team as Executive Director of Academic Partnerships.

As a recent Deputy Vice-Chancellor Students, committed digital innovator and Practera customer, Laura-Anne is well placed to work with our Higher Education customers in Australia and globally.

About the appointment, Laura-Anne said, “Experiential learning is a strategic opportunity space for Universities seeking to attract & retain students, enhance their employability and engage industry. 2020 is proving to be a year like no other and institutions have had to adapt quickly to becoming more digitally enabled whilst remaining cost-effective. A great deal of the heavy lifting has been done by university staff but there is still more work to do. I wanted an opportunity to develop my own skills and experience in digital innovation and edtech as these are crucial to the future of our sector. I’d worked with Practera before so I knew that they were global leaders delivering amazing impact for their customers and also great to work with. So having made the call to ‘disrupt myself’ in this time – it was a natural discussion and I’m now delighted to be part of the team. I’m looking forward to working with a range of colleagues from across the sector as we work in partnership to define our ‘new normal’ and continue to position Australia as a global leader in tertiary education where all our students engage in the best student experience anywhere in the world.”

Practera Co-Founder and Co-CEO Beau Leese agreed. “We’ve had years of edtech innovation compressed into months this year, and the next few years will see further innovation required to develop new value propositions for domestic & international students and industry partners. Having worked with Laura-Anne previously I knew her as a strategic digital innovator with a passion for student experience, access and equity – values that really align with our mission. I really respect that someone of Laura-Anne’s calibre has joined an edtech startup and she will be well placed to help our customers and leadership team with her insights and experience.”

Laura-Anne brings 15 years of Senior University Executive experience to the role. Most recently, Laura-Anne was Deputy Vice-Chancellor Students at James Cook University. Prior to her role as DVC with JCU, Laura-Anne was PVC Student Engagement and Equity at UniSA, Registrar Student Life at ANU, and Head of Student Experience, Registrar and Lecturer in Chemical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Laura-Anne has worked as a Development Engineer with Syngenta & British Gas and holds a PhD in Chem Engineering.

Laura-Anne will join longstanding Practera Senior Academic Advisor Professor @Tony Watson as resident former Senior University Executives. Tony is a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor International and Executive Dean Computing, Health & Science with Edith Cowan University.

Practera platform allowed learning to go on during virus shutdown

February 18, 2020 Practera News1 Comment

A version of this article about our Practera programs was first published in The Australian on 19 Feb 2020.

Around Australia, Universities are currently responding to a serious challenge – how to support the international students – predominantly from China – whose commencement has been impacted by novel Coronavirus. As of the first week of February, 106,680 Chinese international students with visas to study at universities and schools remain stuck outside Australia, – 56% of the entire cohort. Estimates of the potential adverse economic impact on Australia currently range from $3 – $8 billion.

Projects Programs supporting the majority of Australian Universities

Edtech startup Practera is currently supporting more than 20 Australian Universities and a number of State Governments to provide industry project experiences with hundreds of Australian employers to thousands of international students. However this year, a substantial proportion of the participating students – more than 20% – have been impacted by Coronavirus travel restrictions.

Davina Potts, Associate Director Careers, Employability & Global Learning at Melbourne University has a number of impacted students participating in Study Melbourne’s Live Projects program. Live Projects is a 3 week industry project experience where students work to solve a challenge for an Australian business, government or community organisation. It ordinarily involves both in-person meetings and online collaboration. Davina said that “Work Integrated Learning experiences like Live Projects help our students develop invaluable, authentic Australian workplace experience. We were pleased that the Practera platform was able to be quickly reconfigured to support a high quality online only WIL experience for our impacted international students.”

GET A FREE DEMO TODAY – call 0449 192 291 or message programs@practera.com

A focus on student experience and industry engagement

Monash University Commerce student and Study Melbourne Student Ambassador Yi Su, arrived in Australia just hours before the travel ban was put into place and decided to self-quarantine. From her home in Melbourne’s suburbs, she is working collaboratively with her team of Chinese students at home in Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, and stuck in a hotel room in Bangkok to complete their project for an Australian tech startup. Yi Su – “It is a very challenging time, and I am grateful that we have been offered a solution for students who can’t be here in person. This virtual Live Project allows my peers and I to improve our employability skills and practice online collaboration by engaging in a real project with an Australian company. Our client and mentor have been really encouraging and supportive of our situation.”

Industry clients and mentors have been keen to support the students. Yi Su’s team Mentor Li Zhang is the CEO of the Australia-China Economic Trade & Investment Expo (ACETIE) “I have been trying to be extra supportive to the team who are working hard and are grateful to be able to complete this project. I’ve been emphasising that the future of work will demand transnational online collaboration, and therefore this was a great experience to work collaboratively in a digital environment to deliver a great project outcome.”

Practera online learning at equivalent quality to face to face models

Hayley Bolding, Practera Executive Director ANZ, and her team have been working with customers like Davina around Australia to respond to the evolving situation. Hayley said, “The flexibility of our technology platform has allowed us to adapt the program seamlessly to an online environment, replacing in-person elements with virtual ones. We’re confident in making adjustments as our technology has been demonstrated to enable delivery of online project based learning at equivalent quality to face to face models. Our engineering team including members in China, have been able to work quickly to ensure Practera is configured to support an high quality user experience in mainland China”

In NSW, Careers Service Manager, Lucinda Crossley-Meates from the University of Sydney Business School, manages Job Smart, the Business’ School’s award winning digitally enabled employability program for international students. She is facing a similar challenge, how to adapt to engage and support incoming students in the face of travel restrictions and delays. “Working together with a technology partner like Practera shows how we can flexibly overcome significant challenges to support our international students. Using innovative models like online projects and work simulations in our Job Smart program, the University of Sydney Business School is preparing to support the student experience for our students whose commencement may be impacted. Practera is helping us with optionality for our planning to meet a range of scenarios.”

If you want to GET A DEMO or learn more about how you can offer our projects to your students, reach out directly to Hayley Bolding, Executive Director, Practera Australia & New Zealand (M. 0449 192 291) or learn more on our projects programs website.

Christmas Newsletter 2019

December 20, 2019 Practera NewsLeave a comment

As 2019 draws to a close the Practera team wish you and your families a happy festive season and bright 2020. We’ve had an awesome 2019 and hope you have too.

PRACTERA CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Enabling inspiring experiential learning programs

We’re very proud that in 2019 we helped more educators deliver high quality experiential learning to more to students and professionals than ever before. We doubled our customer base in Australia, US and Canada, now including >60% of Australian Universities. Some highlights include;

The University of Sydney won a prestigious AFR Higher Education award for the Job Smart employability program powered by Practera, which has helped improve employment outcomes of more than 10,000 students by 300% 

Practera has been adopted for professional development applications by US thought leaders Northeastern University and Institute for Experiential Learning

7 Universities piloted a new low cost, high quality digital ‘nano project’ model, which grew from 0 – 1,000 students and will be adopted by 20 Universities for 2020.

Boston University expanded its transnational health development projects program to 17 developing countries in Africa, Central and South America

Practera is enabling Study Perth to provide digital employability experiences and micro-credentialing for 50,000 international students in Western Australia – see a product demo here

4 Australian State Governments are using Practera to break down employability barriers with authentic 3-week industry projects to >1000 globally diverse students from 25 Universities with >150 employers

Australia’s Cooperative Research Centre Association adopted Practera as its experiential learning platform to enhance University-industry R&D collaboration

Redfern Legal Centre have launched a ground breaking legal information resource on Practera for NSW’s 260,000 international students in 7 languages – see a demo

If you are looking to strengthen or setup an experiential learning program, we would be happy to help!

PRACTERA PRODUCT UPDATES

Building the worlds leading platform for experiential learning

Rolling out ELSA, our first generation AI product. Experiential Learning Support Assistance automatically detects the most common issues and helps you resolve these with recommended actions, templates and smart tracking- see it in action

Winning a $2M grant to develop world leading student data privacy & security capability to keep your student’s data secure

If you would like to get a demo of Practera, just let us know!

PRACTERA TEAM & VALUES

The team behind our success

We’re super proud of our diverse team living our values in 6 countries around the world;

In 2019 we expanded to 4 Australian offices to better serve our customers, appointing new leaders Suzy Watson in Perth and Jamie Ford in Brisbane

Megan Underwood had a massive year, promoted to VP Canada, opening our Canada office and announced as a Global Learning 30under30 leader

Beenish Sami was promoted to Director of Engineering

Co-founder Suzy Watson was named as an Austrade Women in Tech finalist for 2019

Fun fact; 70% of our team are female from leadership team down and 70% culturally and linguistically diverse – a key contributor to our success

AWARDS, PUBLICATIONS & CONFERENCES

What we write, publish and present at events and conferences

Practera’s state based projects program was a finalist at the QS-Wharton Reimagine awards, our Skills Passport module won best in show at the Canadian e-learning conference, finalist at the Study NSW international education awards

Next year catch us at the following range of global conferences; APAIE (Canada), GIC (Canada), ACEN (Australia), AIEC (Australia), NAGCAS (Australia), ASU-GSV (US), LearnLaunch (US)

We are excited about how experiential learning will change the way we teach and how it will prepare the next generation of learners for the future of work.

If you’d like to learn more or discuss your experiential learning program please contact us.

Practera Projects Programs Shortlisted for the Wharton-QS Reimagine Education Award

October 22, 2019 Practera NewsLeave a comment

We are extremely proud to announce that our “Projects Programs” for Business Students have been shortlisted for the Wharton-QS Reimagine Education Nurturing Employability Award. Up against over 1500 applications from educational innovators from 39 countries we convinced the judges with our proven results of more than 3,000 students who boosted their employability skills through our programs.

Practera’s Projects Programs are offered to all Australian and US Higher Education institutions and help educators to prepare their students for the future of work with authentic and relevant industry projects, without compromising on quality of learning outcomes.

The projects, which are sourced from Practera’s extensive network of project providers, give students the opportunity to participate in short, team-based experiential learning. Participants work with an industry professional on their real world problem, find solutions and present the findings to their client. Students frequently mention and demonstrate immense improvements in critical 21st century skills like critical thinking, complex problem solving, teamwork and communication.

If you’d like to learn more about Practera’s Projects Program offerings and how you could enrol your students in on of our full-service programs, please get in touch with Hayley Bolding, Executive Director of Programs hayley@practera.com.

Practera will showcase their Business Projects Program to over 600 educational leaders at the 2019 Reimagine Education Conference in London, England this December 9th & 10th.

Edtech Startup Practera opens Perth office

October 16, 2019 Practera NewsLeave a comment

Experiential learning startup Practera will open a Perth office to work more closely with customers in WA, including making the Practera platform available to all 50,000 international students through StudyPerth’s “Employability Perth” initiative.

Speaking at the 2019 Australian International Education Conference (AIEC) in Perth today, StudyPerth Executive Director Philip Payne said, “Through digital technologies, we are aiming to put Employability at the heart of the Perth International student value proposition – demonstrating that Perth is not just a great place to live and learn, but to launch global careers.” 

Practera will deliver a ‘Welcome to Perth’ orientation experience, Peer Mentoring ‘Buddy’ program and a Skills Passport eportfolio & microcredential platform.

Practera’s COO and Co-Founder Suzy Watson, a Perth expat, UWA Science and Curtin Accounting alumna, and a 2019 Australian Women in Tech finalist, is relocating to Perth to spearhead local operations following 12 years in Sydney.

At AIEC, Watson spoke about Practera’s involvement in providing the technology to power scalable micro-credentialling & employability initiatives for international students with Study Perth, the Australian Government through the Australia Awards program and the Queensland Government through Study Queensland.

About Perth, she said, “I’m really excited about working on a world leading initiative in my hometown to deliver digitally enabled employability skills, experiences and micro-credentials to international students at large scale. I look forward to deepening our relationships with customers here in WA as well, and hopefully sharing some of our experience from Australia and around the world.”

Practera works with more than a third of the Universities in Australia and a range of Government agencies & businesses to power skill building programs and better prepare learners for the future of work. These are programs like team projects, work simulations, accelerators, mentoring, internships, study abroad and competency credentialling. In addition to Perth, Practera has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, the US and Canada.

If you’d like to know more, contact suzy@practera.com

We’re excited to be a core part of the Employability Perth vision, for every international student to have the opportunity to undertake a range of authentic experiences which build their skills, experience and employability around their study – leading to a unique personal portfolio accessible to their future employers.

Edtech startup Practera invests in Queensland HQ

October 11, 2019 Practera NewsLeave a comment

Experiential learning edtech company Practera has appointed a Queensland leader & partnerships and opened a Brisbane office to work more closely with customers in the state.

Practera Co-Founder & Co-CEO Beau Leese said, “I was privileged to work closely with Study Queensland over the past 12 months as an education innovator in residence. I found that employability and experiential learning are high on the agenda for many institutions, and there is a great deal of energy & innovation in this space around the state. Examples of exciting projects already using the Practera platform in Queensland include a world leading skills micro-credentialling pilot with Study Cairns and Study Queensland, mentoring for nursing graduates from SCU and CQU in regional Queensland, and industry project programs for UQ.”

Incoming Executive Director, Queensland Jamie Ford joins Practera from her most recent role as General Manager Customer Experience & Innovation with UnitingCare Queensland. Prior to that she was a Senior Manager with EY’s Queensland Advisory practice specialising in Higher Education and customer led transformation. She is a regular guest lecturer at UQ Business School, UQ MBA Graduate and Not-for-Profit Board member.

Ford said, “I am really proud to join the Practera team. Practera is an exciting growth stage edtech company that is achieving great outcomes for Universities in Australia and globally. I am a big believer in customer value, innovation and creating opportunities for people through new pathways and skills. I’m very excited about working with educators and industry partners in Queensland to deliver enhanced employability outcomes for students.”

Practera will also form a partnership with Brisbane based employability provider Startup Interns. Practera and Startup Interns collaborated on a recent successful Study Queensland funded program pairing students with startups. Leese continued “Students are seeking to understand career opportunities in fast growth startups, and startups are hungry for talent & mindset with the capability to work entrepreneurially. Startup interns founders Ocean Cheung and Dongjin (DJ) You have done a terrific job building energy in this space in Queensland, and we’re excited to take this program forward with them.”

Startup Interns co-founder & Managing Director Ocean Cheung said, “This partnership with Practera will see us able to advance our mission to deepen the cycle between startup founders and entrepreneurial students through practical experience of working together. Practera are at the global leading edge in this space and will help us achieve our mission at broader scale.”

Practera Queensland’s doors are open and is ready to continue partnering with educators and industry alike to achieve high quality employability outcomes for students.

Reach out to Jamie Ford (jamie@practera.com) or Ocean Cheung (ocean@startupinterns.co) to find out more.

Let’s talk

Submit a project

Submit a project brief to gain access to student teams around the world at no cost.

For Industry partners.

SUBMIT A PROJECT

Connect for a discussion

Contact us for a discussion around how Practera can help you deliver your experiential learning vision.

For Educators and Universities.

START A CONVERSATION

Useful links