Background Clinical placement is an important aspect of medical education. During placements students complete workplace-based assessment (WBA), which provide valuable data for educators to understand student engagement. We describe methods to analyse formative WBA data for clinical skills. We focus on Year 1 medical students, who only start to develop self-regulation skills, and it is crucial to support them effectively during placements. Methodology We used WBA data of Year 1 cohorts across three years (16/17, 17/18, 18/19), comprising of: clinical skill title, assessor role, location, timestamp, feedback, and student comment. To assess the feasibility of a data-driven approach on this type of data we used readily available methods: feature engineering, process mining (ProM), and text analytics (scattertext). Results (1) Across all year groups, diagnostic procedure skills (blood pressure) were completed most frequently, followed by consultation skills (history, communication). Number of skill categories increased in later years, from mostly diagnostic procedures in 16/17 to other categories such as infection prevention, clinical management, and professionalism.(2) All groups showed a spike in the number of completed assessments near the end of placement when students were reminded to complete their WBAs. Students in primary placement tended to start completing WBAs later than those on secondary placement.(3) The range of assessor roles showed a decrease in 18/19, while the frequency of peer assessment increased.