Design and Development of a Learning Design Virtual Internship Program (original) (raw)

Elevating Skills - A Foundation for Virtual Internships

Our world has a serious professional skills gap. The graduates from universities know a great deal but few have the professionals skills society needs. Few firms can afford or are even able to provide the high quality internships that these graduates need, so we need to develop a new foundation to enable virtual internships and serious address the skills gap.

The internship as an experiential learning activity: Student perceptions and benefits

A recent study was conducted to assess the perceptions of design students who had completed an internship with local, national and international firms. Study participants answered questions about compensation, learning, internship satisfaction, and how beneficial this experiential learning activity was in gaining technical, professional and communication skills. Topics for discussion will include the impact of skill acquisition on internships, and the best fit for the internship and career development in an already overloaded design curriculum.

International virtual design studio (ivds) program: overview, challenges, and students' perspectives

IEEE Transactions on Education, 2003

An international undergraduate design project is reviewed in this paper. The International Virtual Design Studio (IVDS) project is a joint project among Queen's University, Middle East Technical University, and Union College. The objective of IVDS is to provide a collaborative design experience to students in different international locations. This paper is an overview of the program and its challenges, as well as a collaboration of ideas and suggestions collected from the IVDS participants and IVDS Coordinators through surveys. This paper complements the previous publication on the IVDS program [1] in which the focus was on the program from the IVDS Coordinators' point of view. These two paper should be beneficial for the organizers of current and future international student design projects. Index Terms-Geographically distributed student groups, international design, internet and design, multicultural design teams. I. INTRODUCTION W ITH the emerging global environment, the need for training engineers to be well prepared to collaborate with their colleagues around the world and to work effectively in geographically distributed, multicultural teams, increases. In the international market place, the Internet is a valuable design tool because of its accessibility and its provision of an inexpensive, innovative, and effective means of sharing information. Several products have been developed to leverage the communication and collaboration power of the Internet for engineers. A list of pertinent references on some of these products is given in [1]. The International Virtual Design Studio (IVDS) was created in 1996 by the Departments of Mechanical Engineering at Union College in Schenectady, NY, and Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, in response to the need to develop the skills among students that are needed to complement the emerging global environment of today's workplace. In 1997, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, joined the IVDS program. IVDS provides teams with international culture interaction and team building, long distance project collaboration and communication, creative thinking, and project management experience. Traditionally, the IVDS projects have been on moving machines (mobile robots), whether electromechanical vehicles or mechatronic ones, and have centered around the METU Mechanical Engineering fourth-year design course.

Collaborating in a Virtual Engineering Internship

Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, 2011

Teamwork and collaboration are vital 21st century skills that students need to master. Specially designed epistemic games modeled after professional practica can help students build and practice these skills. This paper presents preliminary results from a virtual engineering internship, an epistemic game for introductory engineering undergraduates. The game was designed to help build students’ skills in teamwork and collaboration while providing experiences relevant to engineering and design. After the internship students reported a better understanding of what engineers do and about the practice of engineering. Students also made content learning gains. Students overwhelmingly enjoyed the experience and felt encouraged to stay on an engineering career path.

The Evaluation of Internship in the Digital Information Age

International Journal of Online Pedagogy and Course Design

This study evaluates the merits and challenges associated with onsite and online internships, focusing on their impact on objective achievement, intern-industry interaction, interdisciplinary learning, and globalization through the four-I's framework: intentional, interconnected, interdisciplinary, and international. By comparing the experiences of 21 students engaged in eight-week onsite programs alongside 21 online interns, the study finds that online internships offer flexibility and global accessibility, enhancing international skills. However, they score lower in intentionality, interactivity, and interdisciplinary learning. In contrast, onsite internships excel in providing hands-on experiences, real-time observation, teamwork, and the development of interdisciplinary skills development, albeit underutilizing international dimensions. Future investigations could explore how technological advancements like augmented reality and virtual reality might enhance online internshi...

Virtual Internship Training Programme: Pre-Service Teachers' Perception

Voice of Teacher and Teacher Educators, 2021

The COVID-19 cases locked different sectors of the world. The education sector also faced a crisis. Acquisition of knowledge should not have an end. Knowledge acquired through internship must be purposeful. It helps to gain experience in one's preference and is a stepping stone to one who is looking for a job. At present, an essential issue in teacher education is how to design and implement internships. The ongoing COVID-19 lockdown has paved the path for E-internship. The emergency transition to E-internship is by force. E-internship, also known as the virtual internship, is a way of acquiring work experience through a remote setting where the intern is physically absent in an organization. The study attempts to find the level of perception towards virtual internship because of physical absence. The researcher surveyed participating students, which revealed their general perception, concerns, technical obstacles regarding virtual internship by responding to the statements provided. The investigator prepared the scale and given it to them, and an analysis of which is given here in this paper. The investigator further analyzed the level of preservice teachers' perception of virtual internships. Online learning continues to be a global phenomenon in a variety of fields, but especially in Education. The results of this study were; that 50 (17.9%) of the sample had a low level, 186 (66.4%) of the sample have a moderate level, and 44 (15.7%) of the sample have a high level of perception toward virtual internship.

Integrating virtual internships into online classrooms

Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, 2008

for 2 years, teaching a number of face-to-face and online classes. He has a broad research background in the life sciences and has recently completed his own master ' s degree in biotechnology, partially through online classes. He is particularly interested in how entrepreneurship and translational research can be encouraged in the classroom.

Teaching an Engineering Design Course in an Interdisciplinary International Academic Virtual Environment

The European Global Product Realisation (EGPR) course is designed to bring knowledge and skills in engineering education and to develop student's competences for industrial collaboration and realisation. To connect undergraduate learning with real life experience, an academic virtual enterprise has been created between Kesslers International, a UK based company, and final year university students from 5 countries, namely: the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia and Croatia. Mixed international design teams use the most modern technologies and methods to develop concepts and prototypes of products for the core company, aimed to fulfil requirements of a global market. This paper reviews the main aspects and impact of EGPR on undergraduate education at City University and the fulfilment of the four major requirements of UK industry for the education of engineers in the 21 st century, namely: basic knowledge; skills; attitudes and; group work. It further outlines ...

A Novel Paradigm for Engineering Education: Virtual Internships With Individualized Mentoring and Assessment of Engineering Thinking

Journal of Biomechanical Engineering, 2015

Engineering virtual internships are a novel paradigm for providing authentic engineering experiences in the first-year curriculum. They are both individualized and accommodate large numbers of students. As we describe in this report, this approach can (a) enable students to solve complex engineering problems in a mentored, collaborative environment; (b) allow educators to assess engineering thinking; and (c) provide an introductory experience that students enjoy and find valuable. Furthermore, engineering virtual internships have been shown to increase students’—and especially women’s—interest in and motivation to pursue engineering degrees. When implemented in first-year engineering curricula more broadly, the potential impact of engineering virtual internships on the size and diversity of the engineering workforce could be dramatic.

The Role Of Virtual Student Design Teams In Engineering Education For The “New Workplace”

2004 Annual Conference Proceedings

The "new workplace" for engineering is increasingly at the interface of three environments: the Virtual environment, in which designs can be created and explored, with activities that range from interaction via the Internet to 3-D visualization and immersion in alternative designs of engineered systems; the Product Realization environment, in which physical embodiments of designs can be produced and evaluated; and the Human environment, in which people work together in face-to-face and virtual teams, the latter often internationally dispersed, to design and implement products and processes. Functioning at the interface of these environments is a challenge that must be met by engineering graduates. In this paper we primarily focus on the virtual team issues as they relate to pedagogy to prepare students to function on design teams in the "new workplace" and also show how Stevens is moving to address the new paradigm.