Hi Mesut, Thanks for visiting and checking out our work. We are in the last six months of the research project at the moment so we are in the process of evaluating the outcomes of the virtual internship more systematically. However, we have seen students gain full-time internships and jobs, extend summer internship engagements into the academic year, and perhaps more importantly gain confidence in their skills and abilities. On the faculty and internship coordinator side, we have seen the virtual internship model implemented in many different ways to address a variety of challenges faced during 2020 and 2021.  One community college re-designed its computer science capstone course embedding the virtual internship intervention as a way to bring industry partners into the classroom to support the students. I watched the students demo their final projects last week and they were brilliant. Another community college faculty member who uses the virtual internship in their course likes that it is an activity where the students can not cheat or find answers online from past students because the project changes based on the industry partner. 

Thank you, Nikki.  This additional info is very helpful.  Best, Mesut

Hi Neela, Thanks for coming to video our video. Yes, I think this model of experiential learning is sustainable and scalable outside of COVID lockdowns. It is a similar model to one I was a part of implementing in Australia and it became a national program with 30+ university partners involved from 2015 - 2019 long before covid was on the horizon. The value proposition for each of the stakeholders in the ecosystem changes and you can do some of the engagements live/in-person to give everyone the opportunity to interact if possible but in a lot of cases, this model has been used for those who do not have access to normal in-person experiences because of their life situation not covid so the need for virtual options is still needed even if some students can go back to in-person experiences. 

Hi Maia, Thanks for stopping by and checking out our video. Access to hardware and the internet is definitely a concern. We have not addressed in specifically in the research project itself, all of the students who participate in the program come through an institutional partner so the institutions are usually working to solve that problem more broadly (especially at the moment). On the edtech product side, we made some design decisions that make the application as accessible as it can be. Eg. It is a web app that works through browsers so that students can use a broader range of devices (including chrome books), integrate with Grammarly to set the students up for a win when they are collaborating with an industry partner. 

One of the key components of the model is the 'just in time' learning content that steps students through the process of delivering the work they are doing for their industry partner. We designed it so that a student who has never had any professional experience could be successful. If partners are using it for more experienced students they have the option of removing some of the scaffolded content. 

Hi Alex, Thanks for stopping by and checking out our project. I just watched your video and it looks like our projects have a similar purpose. The online platform is an instructional technology that is built specifically to support experiential learning programs that are profession-based (like internships and capstone projects).

The learning curve for the industry partners and the students is short. The platform mediates their engagement with notifications and content that steps them through what they need to do when. For most of the industry partners, it is more like filling in a survey monkey or qualtrics survey as opposed to learning a new platform. 

For the teacher/coordinator it is a little more complicated. The teacher dashboard is a real-time learning analytics dashboard. It is fairly intuitive but in most cases learning how to integrate learning analytics as an affective cue/trigger for supporting students is where the learning curve is steep. 

The hardest part to master is the authoring/instructional design as most people are unfamiliar with how to design the third actor into the learning environment and thinking through the design in context of the data a teacher needs to get the affective cues they need on the dashboard. With this difficulty in mind we did pre-design the virtual internship, scaffolded content and all the structure and mechanics. that drive the teacher dashboard into the mix. Most teachers tend to customize from those pre-designed templates and we work with them to think through how their changes are impacting the experience for the three actors (student, industry partner and teacher) as then participate in the virtual internship. 

The feedback is customized to a specific internship through a mediating project template. This allows for the structure designed into the technology to remain unchanged for each different type of project the students are working on for an industry partner. This allows for a teacher to use the technology to set the cadence of the virtual internship using automation in the technology and then they get flagged by the technology if any of the virtual internships appear to be hitting a rough patch. 

The pedagogical structure of the scaffolding was build in collaboration with the teachers and the project templates were built in collaboration with the teachers and the industry partners. One thing we did learn along the way is that often the industry partners were willing to help but struggled to come up with an appropriate project. So one thing we did do is research industries and fields to build the project templates that helped the industry partners start with a baseline/example and customize it from there. 

Students and industry partners do not really need a lot of support learning the technology itself but they often do need additional support based on what the technology enables. We find that students sometimes need coaching on how to consider constructive feedback from their industry partners or knowing what to share with their industry partner in a project status update so that the industry partner has enough information to provide useful feedback. There are a lot of templates and scaffolded learning content that addresses this for students that can be dropped out overtime as the students are more comfortable. 

For more information, you may want to have a look at our website - https://www.virtualinternships.info/ 

It has all of the research and presentations we have done as a part of the project.