Work Based Learning (WBL)

Registration for WBL is a one-time requirement for the Associate and Fellowship levels.

Yes. You will need to provide evidence, such as an employment letter, confirming your work experience. This will allow ASSA to adjust your start date retrospectively.

Yes. Once your WBL pack (all required skills, time and Review Questions) has been submitted for final review, you may register for Module 7 – Professionalism.

No, you may register for one module per session. You must complete your self-assessment, which needs to be approved by your supervisor, and have completed at least four months of WBL to register for Module 2.

Yes, the WBL platform allows you to pause your WBL. Your time requirement will then continue once you un-pause your programme and continue with WBL.

At the start of your WBL journey you need to provide an indication of your level of expertise (proficiency level) against all skills. This Self-assessment establishes your baseline and helps track development. Here you can also provide evidence of prior experience for skills you’ve already gained.

You and your supervisor should discuss this baseline to align on experience, development needs, and focus areas.

Yes, but you must provide supporting evidence when marking a skill as “Completed”.

If you are already in the process of developing a skill you can go ahead and mark it as “Started” by providing an Action Plan for this skill.

Yes, your supervisor must review and approve your self-assessment.

Once the Self-Assessment of all skills is complete – you must click on the SUBMIT FOR ASSESSMENT button and your supervisor will be notified to go into the system and sign off on the self-assessment so that you can commence with uploading evidence of skills and review questions.

Completing your self-assessment involves selecting your proficiency level for each skill listed. Where you indicate that you already have some experience (Started) or are fully competent (Completed) provide the required supporting details in the comment.

Supporting details or evidence of competency will depend on your specific workplace learning and development, which will differ for each student and is outcomes‑based. The expectation of what fully competent means in your environment must be discussed with your Supervisor.

You may also add additional skills that you aim to develop if they are not listed.

You must complete the full self-assessment (all skills listed) and get it approved before your can submit individual skills development action plans and progress to your supervisor.

A soon as you select a skill for development and record an Action Plan for development it will more to “Started“

The skill will be marked as “Completed” once your supervisor is satisfied (met the state of competency both of you have agreed on) with your progress, and signs off the skills.

There is no standard competency level per skill. It depends on the student and the skills requirement for the individual in their own work environment. Each student must discuss the expectation of a skill as being marked as competent (Completed) with his or her supervisor and consider company development plans and discussions.

It will be the supervisors responsibility to determine when a skills development can be marked as Complete with the appropriate supporting notes and evidence.

This is backdating of information and requires agreement with your supervisor and documented evidence to back up your competency in a skills and when you gained this experience – your supervisor feedback must be concise to confirm these competencies as well.
You will need provide all required information – namely identification of gaps before you stared your development, action plans followed demonstrating that skills have been completed and acquired. (Be careful of being overconfident that the skill is completed as a tick box exercise – get feedback from others and discuss this with you supervisor). ASSA do not expect that a newly employed students would have acquired many skills in a short space of time as we expect progression of skills over time.

The Action Plan is the key steps you are going to take or tasks you need to complete to develop the skill (How are you going to close the skills gap between your current state and a state of competency).
Action Plans can change and that is okay. Make a note against your skill on how you are adapting your plan and continue.

Your Supervisor should ideally work with you to identify your Action Plan so that expectations align before you reach sign-off stage.

You can go ahead with development once you’ve submitted your Action Plan to your Supervisor for approval, but you will only be able to capture development after sign-off of your Action Plan.

Each student’s skills gap and workplace learnings are different and outcomes-based. Your level of detail will depend on your own experience and the gap you need to overcome to reach a higher level of competency. Explain where you will start and the steps you will take to develop and reach a competent level (as discussed with your Supervisor).

Your plan may change as time goes by. Just provide in the comments section of the skill why the plan has changed and what you will focus on going forward.

Yes, just add a comment explaining the change and select a new skill with a revised Action Plan.

Regularly – set aside time monthly to record progress instead of waiting until the end.

Note: You cannot record development until your supervisor has approved your Action Plan.

Update your skills development with comments of the work you’ve done in support of your Action Plan that may include:

Yes, If the opportunity presents to work on skills marked for Fellowship WBL you may continue with that development, This will however, not count towards your skills completion requirements for Core App WBL.

Fellowship Skills started and Completed will be transferred when you register for N411.01 Fellowship WBL.

If you register for WBL after you’ve already worked for some time, you must provide evidence (e.g. an employment letter) confirming your work experience and supervision under a Fellow. Once verified, you can retrospectively submit your evidence against the various skills (even if you need to upload the same letter for those skills), and your WBL start date may be adjusted (back-dated) accordingly.

You will however have to still complete a Self-Assessment and get that approved by your Supervisor to be able to continue with WBL.

Depends on your role and your experience. Each student’s workplace learnings and experiences are different. Supervisors can also give guidance. Ideally choose an essay that is relevant, allows introspection, helped to acquire a skill, and one with a topic you want to learn more of.

Review Questions can be linked to the skills in development, but this is not a requirement.

Yes, you can complete more than one review question per semester.

Review Questions are based on thought leadership and self-reflection. A common framework is Set the Scene or Describe the project. Document how you address the question (steps taken and outcomes). Think about whether the outcome was success, what would you do differently. Demonstrate that you acquired the skill.

There is no prescribed length, but you need to present your argument or research in a logical way that will make sense to your supervisor as well as the external Assessors.

Write up your answers in MS Word and attach to the Review Question you selected for review. On average most answers are around 500 – 1000 words.

Your supervisor must review and comment on how you answered your Review Questions.