At MADA Design, a Design WIL Internship is undertaken as an elective unit. Upon successful completion, the student will attain 6 academic credit points for their efforts. Students have to submit a written report and diary for their internship to be evaluated and pass the unit/internship, with additional feedback provided by the supervisor.

While not recommended, our students can also potentially reach out to agencies/labs independently, outside the purview of Monash University, and choose NOT to enrol in this elective. Such 'internships' will not be considered for academic credit.

We recommend that our students seek out internships through our elective unit.

This academic credit award is closely related to Pt 2: Payment to students.

This is a topic that draws a good amount of debate, especially in the industry. For clarity, this discussion pivots around WIL internships organised as an academic credit awarding unit, not 'internships' that students have arranged with agencies without involvement from Monash University.

PAID INTERNSHIPS

We recommend that industry partners offer paid WIL internships, as a way to encourage and recognise the effort and preparation of the WIL intern(s) made during their application. This also tends to have a positive uptick on the level of dedication coming from the students, as it recognises their successful qualification and selection. In line with our selection process (see Step 3), providing a paid WIL internship can attract high-quality students. This also includes self-sourced WIL internships, where the student has approached an agency on their own (but applied as an academic credit awarding internship).

There are two different ways to provide a paid internship:

1. Offering a one-off 'scholarship award' to the WIL intern(s), to cover daily expenses, travel, meals etc. The WIL intern(s) remain as students, taking on the WIL internship as part of their studies.

2. Employing the WIL intern, where you will need to follow minimum wage requirements and, where applicable, superannuation (see this ATO resource for details) according to your company's policy.

We'll support you through this process, but both payment options are ultimately left to the agency/lab to arrange.

UNPAID INTERNSHIPS

If a WIL intern is enrolled under our Design WIL Internship elective unit, and are therefore part of an academic credit-awarding unit, Fair Work stipulates that this can be unpaid as part of study or vocational placement.

For further details, please refer to the Victoria Fair Work Ombudsman on paid/unpaid WIL internships.

While there is no legal stipulation to provide a paid WIL internship in this scenario, we want to recognise the potential of such WIL internships being misinterpreted as exploitation from the perspective of the public and students. While we communicate this clearly, we nonetheless recommend providing paid WIL internships opportunities for the reasons mentioned above.

INDEPENDENT 'INTERNSHIPS' (OUTSIDE UNI ARRANGEMENT)

If a student applies for an 'internship' independently (i.e. not linked to any academic credit-awarding WIL unit), they must be employed and therefore follow Fair Work legislation, including the provision of insurance coverage and superannuation, where applicable.

For further details, please refer to the Victoria Fair Work Ombudsman.

This does NOT apply to students who submit self-sourced WIL internships with the intention to enrol in the elective for academic credit. 

Part of the goal of this academic unit-linked elective opportunity is to provide assistance in the 'matching' of students with regularly-updated WIL internship opportunities.

Having this centralised 'clearing house' consolidates our WIL internship support efforts, and also provides a common resource and platform for industry partners/labs to register their interests. For agencies that run their own 'internship' program, we are happy to work with you to establish and align goals, work patterns and legal agreements, but the timeline will have to align with our semestral dates.

Beyond the opportunities we help to gather and publish (on this site), our students also have the option of seeking out self-sourced WIL internships. Such options will also be assessed for suitability for Design WIL Interns, and this provides the same layers of support and pastoral care for our students engaged in internships.

Again, while not recommended, students can still seek out independent 'internships' on their own that are not linked to the academic credit-awarding unit. Such arrangements are the sole responsibility of the student.

The general requirement is to offer 80-100 hours of WIL engagement.

In a regular semester, this can be:

• 1 day (8hr) x 10-11 weeks, or

• 2 days (8hr each) x 5-6 weeks

If a WIL internship is taken during the Summer / Winter study periods, we recommend the following work patterns:

• 3 days (8hr each) x 3-4 weeks

• 4 days (8hr each) x 3 weeks

• 5 days (8hr each) x 2 weeks

There can be flexibility in this arrangement, which is to be negotiated with the intern(s).

In addition, students may not know their timetable schedule for an upcoming semester, and we encourage our students to communicate their availability as soon as practically possible. For our industry partners/labs, we seek your understanding in this.

To help mitigate this, if you have specific days of the week where you can host WIL interns, please provide this in your request so that students can better preference their options.

As enrolled students, WIL interns will have insurance coverage by Monash University to protect the students, interests and reputation of Monash University. In addition, Monash University requires a WIL internship host to have the following cover for our interns:

Professional Indemnity Insurance: $10M
Public Liability Insurance: $20M

Please refer to Monash University's procedure on Industry Experience for more information.

For MADA Design, requests to waive insurance or make adjustments to these limits will unfortunately not be allowed.

If you intend to host the WIL intern as an EMPLOYEE of the company (relating to Pointt 2: Payment to students), the WIL intern's liabilities will fall under your company's insurance coverage, and these limits will not apply.

Depending on the type of WIL internship project scope you have in mind, Monash University will send out these legal agreements to be digitally signed between your agency/lab, the student and MADA (Monash Art, Design Architecture).

We recognise that this can take a bit of time to review, and have made samples of these agreements available. Select from one of the following:

• WIL internship with no research project

• WIL internship with a research project

• WIL internship where student is employed by Host (see Point 2)