Blog

Published: 2025-08-22T12:00:02Z

Categories: University education

During my internship at Novita Services in Semester 2, 2025, I had the opportunity to work on a technically challenging, coding-intensive health and disability services and financial technology (FinTech) project, which strengthened my skills as a software engineer and allowed me to contribute meaningfully to the organization. I led a few projects and achieved meaningful outcomes.
At times, I needed to wait for access restrictions to be lifted for resources necessary to complete tasks. When these requests were acted upon, I gained greater access and responsibility, which allowed me to contribute more effectively.
This experience taught me that I thrive in environments where I have technical autonomy and receive the necessary support to work efficiently and deliver results.

I had the chance to contribute value to the host organization who's mission I was on board with in the form of ideas and tangible work.

Novita has the mission of “partnering with and supporting people with disability, their families, and communities to participate to their full potential and live the lives they choose”

I developed soft skills such as adaptability and patience, hard skills such as web development, and had the opportunity to apply these skills to meet workplace expectations and navigate workplace challenges.
I in independently acting as a professional engineer, gained industry experience, performed role-specific activities, solved industry problems, and worked on industry projects. All of this helps with transitioning to full-time work in one's field after completing my studies.

The WIL program is 13.5 units and as cost is based on units, this comes to ~ 3,500 AUD for domestic students and ~ 17,000 AUD for international students.
There's opportunity cost in lost wages (if it's an unpaid placement) and the loss of 3 courses (as each course is worth 4.5 units).

Many students face financial strain, as they must balance full-time placement hours with part-time work in order to meet living costs. While this can also occur during full-time study, university schedules are often more flexible—for example, students might have days with no classes

Even if a student outperforms another in terms of academic records and qualities, it might not be possible for them to secure a paid placement position due to the limited time window and luck involved in this.

Speaking about increasing the value of WIL so it's worth the equivalent of if not more than its current tuition cost.

Could have a minimum amount of hours of mentoring such as 50 hours from degree-qualified engineers in the same discipline as the student to help students become an industry professional as is the case for other professions such as psychology.

The host organization gains a return on their investment into the student through better work contributions from the student as a result of this.

Could have students engage with professionals from other disciplines and learn from them.
Could have students work on the same project as senior engineers to help students learn best practices and more advanced knowledge.
Could require a WIL work plan prior to commencing placement so that it's possible for all parties - student, university, and host organization to be on the same page and on board with this plan. This would enable the student to start working on tasks as soon as possible, contributing and learning a lot sooner.
Could have oversight in place to ensure that the WIL work plan is stuck to and provides a valuable learning experience.

Some of these things (e.g. cross-team engagement), I had a taste of during one's time at Novita, which added to the value of this experience.

Li, J & Randhawa, S 2018, "Work Integrated Learning for Engineering Students at Flinders University", viewed August 2025, <Work Integrated Learning for Engineering Students at Flinders University>.