by Charlie Legge, student at Coventry University doing his work experience with the lab

Today was the first day of my Work Experience placement with my course, in an effort to improve employability the university have made some courses - including my 2nd year Psychology course - contain a mandatory Work Experience Module. I decided to go with the DMLL, having enjoyed the short Add+vantage module there
last semester. The work turned out to be identical to what I had previously been assigned to on the module; assisting with the Students’ Online Project in Industry (SOPI) project, after many introductions to many member of the DMLL whose names I’ll probably
have difficulty recalling due to the number! The SOPI project is essentially about getting groups of students involved in an interactive learning experience that includes interacting with industry managers over Google+, getting posed problems one week and
providing solutions the next. The team I’m attached to is undertaking research to determine the effectiveness of the project.

My day was spent running some of the initial stages
of thematic analysis on 145 assessments submitted by students on the SOPI project, looking for “codes” and “themes”, the specifics of what type of thing students were saying in their reflections on the project. I had a break in order to get briefed on the
GameChangers project which another team is running, basically an independent, online-based workshop designed at getting participants through the stages of creating their very own game over a few weeks. The initial opening starts next week so I’ll be attending
to get a better idea of the project, I may not be needed but my supervisor Gemma mentioned it would be good to get a slight variance in what I get to see at the DMLL over the course of my placement.

75 assessments down, 70 to go!