VERPRA35 Practical Studies Related to Bachelor Thesis Course description

The main focus is milieu therapeutic work, habilitation and rehabilitation, related to the social educator's field of work. VERPRA35 includes user-oriented practice in real professional situations. The bachelor's thesis in VERB3900 is prepared on the basis of experiences in VERPRA35. Collaboration across enterprises, levels and sectors, quality-improving work processes and innovative thinking are central to the measures that are to be established/continued.

The students themselves choose a relevant area of specialization that the university offers. Alternatively, the students themselves can suggest a relevant area of specialization. The students will collaborate with the practical training institution and service recipient(s) on relevant issues that they will work on independently in the course.

VERPRA35 includes 11 weeks (330 hours) of user-oriented practical training in real professional situations.

Please note, that in connection with VERB3900, there is 1 seminar week prior to the practical training in VERPRA35. In this seminar week, the focus will be on project description, data collection methods, APA standard and implementation of projects in preparation for the bachelor's thesis.

Passed all credit-bearing courses in the 2nd year of study, as well as VERPRA21.

After completing the course, the student has the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

The student

• can give an account of laws and regulations that are relevant to the activities at the place of employment
• can describe the professional foundation of the place of employment and how the place of employment describes the purpose of its own activities
• can describe the service location's quality, notification and deviation management systems
• can describe case processing routines at the place of employment
• can give an account of the enterprise's reporting and journal system
• can give an account of interdisciplinary and interprofessional cooperation the service institution has across enterprises, levels and sectors
• has knowledge of evidence-based methods that contribute to improving the service recipient's quality of life

Skills

The Student

• can prepare a project description
• can safeguard the rights of service recipients, self-determination and provide decision-making support
• can use relevant methods in mapping and assessment work to identify the service recipient's goals and needs as a basis for measures
• can develop measures that are in line with ethical requirements, laws and regulations to promote mastery and participation
• can plan, implement, document and evaluate a knowledge-based training and/or care measure in collaboration with the service recipient and others
• can assess the risk of undesirable incidents and can describe methods for following up this systematically in collaboration with others
• can supervise, or possibly provide training to, service recipients, next of kin, employees or other actors by applying professional knowledge and results from research and development work

General competence

The student

• can discuss professional, ethical and legal challenges and dilemmas in milieu therapeutic work, habilitation and rehabilitation
• can discuss and make use of critical reflection of their own work process and their own collaboration with others
• can contribute with innovative thinking and possible systematic quality-improving work processes, including the use of digital and welfare technology opportunities and solutions, in collaboration with service recipients, next of kin, other service providers and actors
• can discuss the professional role in an interdisciplinary context and can initiate and contribute to interprofessional and cross-sectoral collaboration
• can exchange professional views and experience and contribute to the development of good practice.

The work and teaching methods include external practice, lectures, seminars, group work, self-study and skills exercises related to supervisory skills and meeting and group leadership. The practical training requires active participation in work tasks at the place of employment.

The following coursework must be approved in order to take the final assessment:

• Project description of up to 1000 words for the bachelor's thesis*
• Participation in teaching related to the chosen specialization topic - 80 percent attendance
• participation in work tasks at the place of employment, minimum 90 per cent attendance
• assessed in accordance with suitability criteria ; Regulations relating to suitability assessment in higher education
• submitted, completed and signed practice documents according to given criteria

*If the project the student is participating in is changed after the original project description has been approved, the student must submit a new project description for approval within given deadlines.

Assessed practical training:

The assessment is based on the learning outcomes for the course, and the ongoing assessment made of the student's achievement of the learning outcomes in the practical training courses. In order to be able to give an assessment of the student, a minimum of 90 per cent attendance in the practical training is required.

New and postponed assessment:

"Failed" practical training normally means that the student must retake the entire practical training course.

The following applies to all the practical training courses in the programme

Practical training is assessed as pass/fail. Passing the practice requires that three elements are passed:

• Compulsory attendance
• Learning outcomes
• Fitness

Passed practical training requires that the student has fulfilled the requirement for compulsory attendance. In the practical training courses, a minimum of 90 per cent attendance is required. If the limit for absence is exceeded, the student can make up for missing practical training/teaching, provided that this is practically possible. If the absence cannot be compensated, the period must be made up in full. This leads to a delay in the student's study progression.

A real artificial intelligence project will be carried by a large team of students. A practical application will be targeted using state-of-the-art methods and tools. The students will construct a working system from scratch, implementing machine learning components as well as using existing tools. The students are involved in the entire process, starting from earlier design choices to the AI system completion. Examples of tasks may include speech processing and image recognition, robots or drones navigation, self-driving vehicles, and chatbots.

Through this course, the students will gain an in-depth understanding of "AI in practice", as opposed to "AI in theory" or "AI on toy problems".

No formal requirements over and above the admission requirements.

Upon successful completion of the course:

Knowledge

The student:

• understands why, when and how to use AI methods in realistic problems that they may encounter in their technical careers
• knows how to produce the necessary technical documentation
• understands how to manage a project in its expertise domain

Skills

The student can:

• work in a large group with a vaguely defined problem statement
• assess different frameworks and tools for artificial intelligence in given contexts
• build systems that realise aspects of intelligent behaviour
• take part in the design and implemention of a relatively large AI project
• debug AI applications and correct bugs at a system level (integration)

General competence

The students can:

• work in a project within their specific expertise area
• make decisions based on limited information
• tolerate previous decisions when they turn out to be suboptimal and can evaluate them when better information becomes available

The project work will be carried out in groups of a size suited for the assignment and focused around the relevant laboratories at OsloMet. The groups are relatively large, with 5-10 students.