Digital Degree Apprentice Review

This differs between studying at university and being on the various placements, I'm currently on my year long placement and I have a stand-up with my team every morning to discuss what I'm working on, and bi-weekly catch-ups with my manager. I organise meetings and send emails to reach my goals on a day-to-day, with a monthly focus on external development.

I've gained a lot of soft-skills and my confidence rose: I improved my presentation skills in both communication and producing slides, as well as how to handle difficult situations in meetings and emails. I also developed HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and a bit of JQuery) skills while focusing on development.

I like that we can continue our university studies with students outside of this programme, the degree apprenticeship allows me to experience university and a first corporate job at the same time without impeding on either. I think that the options for placements should only be technical, or at least every person on the course has a technical role available to them as that is what we are studying for.

We flow from university to placement smoothly, there hasn't been any problems there - we also have starter days where we reunite and have talks before going into placement. One problem is that we have to fill in competencies for our apprenticeship which have been badly organised, as they've changed 3 years into the placement.

We receive a good amount of support, we have monthly calls where we get together and before placements start we have an initial day to re-unite as colleagues, have talks on what to expect and what is ongoing at Vodafone and play a game. We can always message them when needed.

We receive a good amount of support from the university, I have a tutor who I see weekly with my tutor group, we discuss problems with modules, assignments and general university life. In our tripartite meetings, our tutor shows up where I can discuss things with them and the employer.

I do not feel that my qualification has helped too much to perform better at my role: my degree is for computer science and hence a lot of the time in my course I'm programming or discussing technical solutions. My role in Vodafone is not technical but rather managerial based which we do not do in my course.

As we are all working from home there are less extra-curricular activites to get involved in: we have occasional coffee catch-ups / casual calls and we have a stand-up every morning where we spin a wheel, the team member chosen has to show what they're working on at any time in the day and everyone has to follow.

Yes

This is a great opportunity, your university experience is very similar to what it would be without this but you also have the added benefit of not having to worry about getting a placement - on top of this you get additional summer placement experience, a paid-for degree and a salary throughout.

Don't worry about the placements being outside of Birmingham, summer and the industrial year are very different to university so it's fine to go further away to take advantage of the opportunity. Think about what you're interested in for the placements and maybe raise this to someone, if you are keen to get a technical role.