FRAMEWORKS FOR THE DEPLOYMENT OF INTERNATIONAL INTERNSHIPS
International Internships
About
International internships are crucial for students to secure the hands-on experience and intercultural communications skills that can make a difference after graduation. Interns are also an important source of new ideas and innovations required by all industries regardless of their size or raison d'être. Getting real work experience helps students test their knowledge and facilitates transition to the labour market, especially in industries that require employees to operate internationally.
Type
Highly Structured and academic based internships: Programs designed from the ground up to provide high quality learning experiences, and directly connected with the curriculum, offer students meaningful and powerful opportunities to expand their cognitive, interpersonal and communication skills. Such programs carefully measure the evolution of students' learning journey with key internship placement partners.
Standard placements: There is a proliferation of internship or volunteer opportunities that focus on the provision of an international experience first as a means for participants to acquire skills needed for them to succeed later on. But such programs risk scaling in the name of inclusiveness. These initiatives can create experiences without the principles that govern international cooperation and excellence.
Learning Approach
Up to the internship placement: This option leaves the responsibility of training to the internship partners. If this modality is encouraged, higher education institutions can develop general principles that set limits and responsibilities for all parties involved for the sustainability of such programs.
In conjunction with the internship placement: This option can require greater investments from the home institutions as it will require changes to the internship placement in order to convert the teaching and learning objectives into tangible outcomes. In this case, internship partners can enhance their own in-house teaching or training practices as they benefit from the input of their interns.
Partner Involvement
From internship service providers or governments: These solutions facilitate the provision of internship opportunities but these providers have different rationales for these programs and such change of angle can alter the main objectives of the internship, especially for the most demanding universities. Institutions can offer principles of engagement that influence the design and learning outcomes of these programs.
Custom designed internships: These programs require long-term planning and an institutional commitment, allowing universities to offer rich learning environments outside of the classroom.
Technicalities
Location: The selection of the location, which is related to the place of the internship, is important as interns' future success will depend on their ability to transform their knowledge (from university), and practices (from their internship) to solutions for groups of people or in some cases societies at large.
Technology elevates the human factor: The availability and sophistication of technology in the workplace has released workers from some of the repetitive operational tasks, encouraging them to build soft skills that make great interns highly desirable by future employers.
Prestige of the internship partner: Careful selection is important as the students' experiences will depend on this choice.
Networking: In addition to improving their practice and skills for working across teams, developing professional relationships truly improves the lives of interns and it allows the transmission of knowledge.
