Course Information - ELEC4702 Practical Experience
Industrial Work Experience for Third/Fourth Year Students
- Course outlines
- What is the pre-requisite for work experience?
- What kind of job can count as work experience?
- How many credit points will the student gain from this UoS?
- What does this UoS require?
- Is there a deadline for submission of the report?
- Who is responsible to find and apply for work experience?
- Assistance from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering and the Careers Centre:
- How to apply for a work experience placement?
- Can I work overseas?
- Can I work for more than one company?
- Register your work experience
- Certificate from the company
- How do I write my report?
- How to submit my report?
- What happens after submission of my report?
- Further contact
The Bachelor of Engineering degree requires students to obtain industrial work experience of twelve weeks (60 working days) duration towards satisfying the requirements for award of the degree. Students may undertake their work experience after completion of a minimum of 24 credit points of Year 3 units of study when they have built up a sufficient background of engineering. The following provide information about work experience and student can also contact the course coordinator for a further discussion if his/her question is not answered by this introduction paper.
The pre-requisite of this UoS is completion of a minimum of 24 credit points of Year 3 units of study. You may contact the course coordinator for a discussion if you are in your third year and with to undertake your work experience but have not yet successfully completed 24 credit points of Year 3 UoS.
The type of job that is acceptable for work experience may vary: from process work and technical support through to engineering design and research or software design and maintenance. In general, the job should be in an engineering environment but not necessarily in the same discipline of the degree the student is pursuing. For instance, simply selling equipment for a computer firm is not considered suitable, however, the technical support work (while selling) may be suitable.
Non. You don’t gain any credit from this UoS but it is compulsory and you cannot graduate without completion of it.
At first, you need to find a suitable position of work experience then work for 60 days and finally submit your Work Experience Report (see below for details about submission of your report).
There is no deadline for submission of the work experience report. But it is a good practice to submit it in the first two weeks after your entry to Year 4 if you have already completed your work experience. However, students may continue to complete work experience after Year 3 or even after Year 4. Then you can submit your report at any time by email (see below).
The student is responsible to find the job. This would be a good excise for the student who will need to find a long term job after graduation.
The School will assist students as much as possible. An icon for “MyCareer” is set at the School webpage http://www.ee.usyd.edu.au/. This is linked to advertisements for companies, (including the EE Foundation members) and useful information (such as how to draft your resume, how to prepare for an interview, etc). There is also a list of companies which have provided work experience for students in the past.
Students can also get advice from the Careers Centre which has contact with many firms. The Careers Centre is located in the Mackie Building, Arundel Street, Forest Lodge - which is across the Parramatta Road footbridge (telephone 9351 3481; website http://www.careers.usyd.edu.au/).
You are encouraged to write directly to the companies that may offer a work experience position. You may find these companies from their advertisements or from other sources. Writing an application is actually an integrated part of the work experience. Your application may be written in a general form. Suggestions as to how to prepare a good application can be found on the School “MyCareer” webpage or the Careers Centre webpage.
Yes, you can work overseas with overseas companies.
Yes. You can accumulate the total number of days working with more than one companies. In your report you may emphasis on one company and provide brief report of works with the others.
As soon as you accept a job offer you should send an e-mail for registration on an online database to:
e-mail address: eief@ee.usyd.edu.au
Subject: Work Experience
e-mail Body:
- your name & SID,
- which semester and year you enrolled in the unit of study ELEC4702 Work Experience
- your employer’s address, contact person and relevant telephone/fax numbers
- period of employment agreed upon/at the firm
- type of work.
As a matter of courtesy, you should also contact any other employers whom you have approached and let them know that you are no longer available for consideration.
Upon completion of your work experience, you should get a letter from the firm indicating the period of employment and the type of work you have undertaken and attach it to your report. You should inform the company that a short report on the work experience is to be submitted to the School.
You need to prepare a report after completion of the work experience. The report may be divided into three sections:
- Organisation and structure of the firm (this requirement can often be satisfied with a line diagram taken out of an Annual Report of the firm).
- Some comment on the sections of the firm that you came into contact with (ie what do they do, why they exist).
- What you have done in your period of work experience.
You might also comment on management/union interaction and any other interesting issues. In general, 4-6 pages in length should be sufficient. Appendices are allowed if you wish to keep all your work together, but they may not be read within the School.
You need to submit your work experience reports by email. Please read the following requirements carefully and follow all the details (such as what should be in the “Subject line”), otherwise your report may be rejected.
- Your submission must be ONE single PDF file and consist of:
- A cover page that can be downloaded from this web site;
- The main body of your report;
- A certificate from the company, and any other attachment (can be scanned and then included in the file).
Note: Any other format of file will not be accepted.
- The format of the file name is as below with a dash in between of adjacent sections:
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2006S2-200299999-Smith.pdf
2007S1-199900000-Lee.pdf
- Subject: quote your file name above as the subject of your submission-NO other worlds;
- email your submission to workexperience@eelab.usyd.edu.au
After submission you may receive an automatic response indicating that your submission has reached the destination mailbox. If you have followed the requirement above your report will be assessed and you will be notified in at the end of the semester together with the results of other UoS.
For further inquiries that is not covered by this paper you may contact the unit coordinator Dr Xiheng Hu (telephone 93516574; Room:303, Link Building; e-mail: hxh@ee.usyd.edu.au). You must put Work experience in the subject line of your e-mail.
