Make eAssessor Easy.
eAssessor the task at the bottom of every degree apprentice’s to-do list but unfortunately, it’s an important one. I’m in my last year of my apprenticeship now and all the effort I have put into my eAssessor is massively benefiting my portfolio and synoptic projects. Instead of scrambling for evidence and looking back through thousands of emails of what to present to show my development over the past 4 years, I can simply go into my eAssessor, choose the knowledge, skill, or behaviour (KSBs) I need to demonstrate, and download in one click all the content I have accumulated over the years associated with that KSB. What comes to mind is the NatWest advert where the person of today starts saving for his future self in 12 months and that person then comes smashing through the wall announcing they are turning the living room into an open plan. Think of the work you do in eAssessor today as a huge favour you’re doing for your future self in your final year so you can smash through the walls of your assignments. I know I know I cringed at myself writing that, but the point is valid, make eAssessor something you do in small chunks consistently over the years and make your last year easy. I will show you how I have built up a huge amount of content so that my problem now is not a lack of but too much choice.
This is not a how to guide when it comes to using your eAssessor portal as providers use different solutions and even those solutions get updated. Instead, I will cover the simple things I have done consistently to have a strong portfolio.
Weekly Uploads.
Maybe an obvious one and one you have already been told to do, but if were sticking with the theme of consistent small chunks make sure you update your eAssessor every week. Block out sometime each Friday in your working day if only to do the basics. My apprenticeship requires me to log Off the Job (OTJ) hours which is time my employer allows me to work on my degree or any other development. I visit my university for lectures once a week so the basics for me is simply logging these 8 hours I spend at university. However, doing more than the basics is where you get the real benefits. Your apprenticeship will have some knowledges, skills, and behaviours (KSBs) you need to demonstrate which in your final year some of your assignments are designed to do exactly this; ‘show us how you have developed in these areas with evidence’. It’s here were doing slightly more than the basics is going to compound and really help you get a good grade.
Create a Log of Your Work.
In the first years of the of my apprenticeship I would sit down to write or upload something and stare blankly at the screen pondering what the heck to upload. I suffered with this blankness for years until I started a new team, and my manager asked me to keep a log of my work for his reporting, so I started to write down my days’ work each day which I kept in a Google Sheets doc. At the end of the week, I collated my work into a report and sent it off. By chance after sending off my report I sat down for my Friday session to write something in my eAssessor and it clicked, instead of staring blankly desperately trying to think of something to write about I now had this bird’s eye view of my weeks work. I simply had to look at the report, take a moment to think about how I can map this to the KSBs and right it up. With one simple process introduced this painstaking task turned into a breeze! I now had a week’s worth of content I could write about and the more I wrote the easier mapping the KSBs to my work became, you train your brain to notice these things and they start appearing without you noticing.
Automate It.
Manually entering the details in the Google Sheet after a couple of times was becoming a bit of a time-consuming task so instead, I automated it with a service called Pipedream. This service allows you to set up workflows you can trigger in different ways which is a series of tasks essentially to achieve an overall task. I created a web-hook that I could send a rough email to with my days’ work it would then format, date, and add to my Google Sheet doc. At the end of the week, I simply had to go to my doc and see the week broken down. The core tip here is to simply create a log of the things you work on so any setup is fine, you don’t need to automate it, pen and paper is all good if that works for you but by automating it in some way you can make this task even easier and save you some time.
Time Blocking.
I imagine like a lot of people I saw my calendar as a place that holds my meetings and that’s all however, after one evening of falling into a YouTube hole listening to the productivity guru Ali Abdaal, I came across time blocking. Time blocking is a very simple method for managing your time, but its effective. You simply look at your calendar and block out time for the task or project your working on, easy. I started using this method and my calendar went from looking barren like the shelves of Sainsbury’s during lockdown to every minute in the day scheduled like those tiktokers who stack their fridge full of food neatly packed away in every plastic and glass container imaginable. It’s oddly satisfying to watch. Time blocking is great and if you want to know more don’t listen to an enthusiast like me go and watch a video from Ali Abdaal, our god in the productivity space. The point I want to make here is after applying this method I no longer needed my automated my daily work list I had it in my calendar. I was killing two birds with one stone, using this new time management skill helped me work better while creating a list of things I can write about in my eAssessor.
Before and After Your Assignments.
Your apprenticeship supplier is looking to see how by being a part of their program you are flourishing from a junior caterpillar into a senior butterfly armed with skills they taught and making an impact in your company. This is the golden nectar for them as they can see how their program is performing, if you can show them how the apprenticeship is helping you develop, they love it and they love to see it in your assignments (the ones tied to the apprenticeship). One easy way to do this is by uploading journal entries before and after all assignments. When you have read your assignment brief take 30 minutes writing about it. In this cover things like how you feel about it, what you think is going to be tough, what you think you will enjoy, how you’re going to approach the whole assignment or certain tasks you think are challenging. Once, you complete your assignment write another. Bring up the entry you added before and use that as a guide to write this one, what did you do well, the approach you chose did it work? If not, why not? What have you learnt both in the unit and about yourself how you manage/ tackle these types of projects. This isn’t only great for your supplier but you also, like I mentioned I am in my final year now using my eAssessor evidence heavily, I have re-read these entries and simply re-worded them for my assignment.
Screenshot, Screenshot, Screenshot.
One thing I wish I had done more of was to screenshot emails, project artefacts, positive feedback anything that could be used in the apprenticeship. I wrote about all these things in my Friday sessions but hardly ever included screenshots of what I was talking about. Don’t do this! If anything, overly screenshot. The assignments for your apprenticeship need this type of evidence, for example I had a presentation of my development over past 4 years and I had to talk about certain things I had done in that time. It was not enough to talk about these things I had to include visual evidence for the marker and talk over this evidence. I had the journal entries of what I could talk about but no visual evidence of these things which sent me on a mission through my inbox, project management tool, performance reviews to dig them out. Screenshot a lot!