Developing a Typology within the Internship Landscape in Engineering Education: an initial comparative study

Work to evaluate work-integrated learning experiences (2020), and the EJEE special issue on bridging the gap between engineering education and the world of practice by guest editors Buckley, Trevelyan, and Winberg (2021).
What these publications show, among other things, is the wide variety of work-integrated experiences that universities offer. However, to properly study the contribution of internships to student learning and learning outcomes, it is important to understand the different types of internships that are offered. Internships vary greatly in length and can be a mandatory or elective part of the curriculum but also voluntary, either expected or not expected. Some have very clear learning objectives and deliverables whereas others only require the completion of the actual work experience. Shawcross et al. (2014)’s work is based on two-week-long team-based experiences, while at TU Delft internships only occur in the MSc programmes and are usually formally 3 months in length, but in practice, students prefer to extend to 5 to 6 months. Some may even continue within their place of internship to do their master’s thesis work (Kamp & Verdegaal, 2015), and in the USA many students do a summer internship often named coop (different from coop degree courses) as a summer activity.
Hence the authors are creating an overview of the work-integrated learning landscape by developing a typology of internship variations by studying the internship possibilities at several engineering programmes in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This paper will present the first version of the typology developed.
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