We often see surprised faces when we talk about our success in partnering with universities to provide our Nano Projects: full-service authentic work experiences for their students – 100% online and at the lowest cost in the market. That’s why we decided to write about how it works and what the experience is like for students, participating industry partners and universities.
Practera is collaborating with 20 Australian Universities to provide online project experiences, a unique experiential learning opportunity that matches student teams to industry partners, to thousands of domestic and international students.
In their team, each students is expected to spend about 25h of effort to solve a real business challenge described in their project brief.
By offering these guided 3-week industry projects, students learn critical 21st century employability skills like communication, teamwork and problem solving and start building their professional network.
The projects are sourced from hundreds of Australian employers, who provide direct feedback on the student deliverables. Because of the short duration, we call these short-term, high-impact online experiences “Nano Projects”.
For example, we have a team of Chinese students who are at home in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Dalian, which will complete their project with an Australian company virtually, guided and facilitated by their Practera app.
Due to our large network of industry providers, we are able to provide Nano Projects that are relevant to the student’s degree or major.
Innovative technology is the secret to success
The Nano Projects, as well as all of our other services and programs, are delivered via our experiential learning technology platform. The flexibility the platform has allowed us to transform traditional projects into our Nano Projects format, replacing in-person elements with virtual ones and adapting the program seamlessly to an online environment.
Program coordinators are able to monitor and keep track of everyone’s learning experience through the Practera administrator interface. Data analytics and automated recommendations on how to improve participant satisfaction and learning outcomes give educators the super powers needed to manage and quality assure large online cohorts.
Based on experiential learning pedagogy and backed by research
Due to our recent research of the quality of online project based learning, we know how to make these changes while preserving the authenticity and educational value of the experience in online projects. By analysing more than 200 projects, we were able to prove that these experiences are pedagogically sound and of the same quality than comparable in-person project based learning experiences.
Our “Quality in online Project-based Learning” research white paper is available for free and was presented at ACEN conference in 2018.
Nano Projects – A simple, scalable solution for higher education providers
“Practera is an innovative technology and programs partners for the University of Melbourne in delivering experiential learning. Practera have delivered online and in person projects for hundreds of students across faculties with outstanding results.”
Dr. Davina Potts
Director Global Leadership and Employability University of Melbourne
We offer Nano Projects as a full-service product. Additionally to the technology, which hosts any of our experiential learning experiences, we provide 5 key services to enable a truly end-to-end solution without extra effort for university customers.
Client sourcing & matching
We source real, authentic clients who provide us with project briefs. You can choose the discipline and our team of experts ensures that all projects are appropriate for your students.
Content & platform
Throughout their project, your students will be guided by high quality content delivered through the Practera mobile interface. Pre-defined milestones, activities and tasks ensure that student teams know what to do and when to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Participant support
Each project is supported by dedicated Practera support staff who ensure that teams and project clients are on track. Our support staff consists of educators and practitioners with years of experience in delivering experiential learning programs.
Digital Certificate
At the end of every project, all participants receive a digital certificate.
Reporting & Quality Assurance
Our expert program coordinators ensure the quality of each experience by monitoring and proactively nudging students towards successful project outcomes. At the conclusion of each experience, a cohort report of all your participating students is provided to you and your team.
“Practera has delivered high quality, industry engaged project programs for the Business School at reasonable cost, both in curriculum and extracurricular. Practera has been a trusted, reliable partner for more than 5 years.”
Lucinda Crossley-Meates
Manager, University of Sydney, Business School Careers & Employability Office
Success in numbers
In 2019, we have successfully provided Nano projects to more than 2,000 students from most of Australia’s universities. Our satisfaction ratings from students, industry clients and university customers are constantly exceeding expectations.
With >90% engagement and completion rates for these often extra-curricular activities, we are proud to have created a successful offer to systematically build students work experience, 21st century skills and professional networks alongside study.
For 2020, we are on track to triple the number of students in our Programs and hope to collaborate with you soon.
Get started today
If you are interested in our Nano Projects for your students at small, medium or large scale, please feel free to reach out to us: programs@practera.com or visit our programs page.
Note: All our programs can be run in-house as well, we are happy to teach you the ropes and provide access to the Practera platform to give you and your colleagues the super powers needed to effectively and efficiently create, deliver and quality assure your experiential learning programs.