Blog post based on the following paper, presented at ITiCSE 2025: Andrei, O., Barr, M., Nabi, S. W., & Morrison, A. (2025). Understanding Skill Transfer Between University and Workplace Through Reflective Practice: A Software Engineering Work-Based Learning Experience. Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1, 368–374. https://doi.org/10.1145/3724363.3729119

The Challenge of Bridging Academia and Industry

As educators, we’ve long wondered: How well do the skills we teach in university transfer to the workplace? And what about the reverse – how do workplace experiences enhance academic learning? Our recent study at the University of Glasgow offers fresh insights into these questions through a unique lens: reflective essays written by software engineering apprentices.

What We Did

We analysed 58 reflective essays from students in our Graduate Apprenticeship programme – a four-year work-based degree where students spend about 80% of their time working at companies whilst completing their university studies. These students were employed at 13 different tech companies, from startups to large corporations, experiencing firsthand the realities of software engineering practice.

Key Findings: It’s Not a One-Way Street

Our analysis revealed something interesting: as we’d hoped, skill transfer on the apprenticeship degree isn’t the simple, one-way process from university to workplace on which traditional education models are predicated. Instead, we found a dynamic, cyclical relationship where each environment enhances learning in the other.

Skills That Transfer Well from University to Workplace:

1. Software Development Fundamentals – Design patterns, programming concepts, and software release engineering practices learnt at university provided crucial groundwork that students could immediately apply and refine in their jobs.
2. Communication and Presentation Skills – Even though workplace communication is more complex, the presentation skills developed through university assignments gave students a solid foundation to build upon.
3. Research and Problem-Solving Frameworks – Students found that research methods and analytical thinking approaches taught at university helped them tackle workplace challenges, even if the specific contexts differed.

Skills Best Developed in the Workplace:

1. Project Management and Leadership – Whilst universities can introduce these concepts, the real development happens when students face actual project deadlines, team dynamics, and business consequences.
2. Context Switching and Adaptability – The ability to juggle multiple projects and rapidly shift between different technical contexts emerged as a crucial skill that’s nearly impossible to simulate in academic settings.
3. Advanced Technical Implementation – Some technical skills, particularly those involving complex real-world systems and legacy codebases, could only be meaningfully developed through workplace experience.

The Power of Reflection

An additional finding was how valuable the reflective essay assignment itself proved to be. Students reported that writing these essays helped them recognise connections between their academic and workplace learning that they hadn’t noticed before. As one student noted, reflecting on their journey helped them understand how lambda calculus concepts from university suddenly clicked when applied to real Python projects at work.

Implications for Education Design

Our findings suggest several key considerations for educators designing WBL programmes:

1. Embrace the Cycle – Design curricula that expect and support bidirectional learning between university and workplace.
2. Focus on Foundations – Universities should prioritise teaching adaptable, foundational concepts rather than trying to replicate every workplace scenario.
3. Build in Reflection – Structured reflection assignments aren’t just assessment tools – they’re active learning mechanisms that help students integrate their experiences.
4. Accept the Limits – Some skills, like advanced project management and context switching, will primarily develop in the workplace. That’s okay – universities should prepare students for this reality rather than trying to simulate it perfectly.

Looking Forward

This study reinforces that effective professional education isn’t about choosing between academic rigour and practical experience – it’s about thoughtfully combining both. Work-based learning programmes offer a unique opportunity to observe and optimise this combination in real-time.

For apprentices, the message is clear: value both your university education and workplace experiences, but most importantly, take time to reflect on how they connect. For educators, the challenge is to design programmes that facilitate these connections whilst acknowledging that some of the most valuable professional skills will emerge from the authentic pressures and opportunities of real work.

Perhaps the future of computing education lies not in making universities more like workplaces or vice versa, but in creating programmes that help students navigate and benefit from the unique learning opportunities each environment provides.

For more information, please see the original paper: https://doi.org/10.1145/3724363.3729119