Developing an On-Campus Internship Model for Computing Students - An Alternative Experiential Learning Pathway

Off-campus internships offer students the opportunity to practice and develop their technical, project and professional (soft) skills in an industry setting. It is an opportunity for students to improve their social and professional networks as well as to determine the career paths they wish to pursue after graduation. Internships have proven to be a predominant route to full-time early career graduate roles. Enterprise (for the purposes of this paper enterprise include for-profit business, civil service and public sector bodies) report that internships are beneficial as students bring new energy, fresh perspectives and innovation to the work projects and teams. Additionally, it provides early access to the new talent pool and the opportunity to assess employability of the intern during the internship period. However, not all students for various reasons can access traditional internship roles. This paper presents the development of the on-campus internship programme for computing students, which culminates in a model for delivering such a programme. The programme is a pathway for students who do not obtain off-campus internships, to gain experiential learning competencies to access future graduate careers. The development process is comprised of a comprehensive enterprise consultation, to determine their needs through 1) a focus group, 2) interviews and 3) surveys. Furthermore, this paper presents the findings of an on-campus internship pilot through student surveys. These consultations combined with the pilot informed the model design structured around three skills tracks. The work presented in this paper is of value to the computing education community, as the model provides the opportunity for institutions to develop an alternative student on-campus internship programme while still meeting employability needs.