Zoom or Gloom: The Challenges of a Virtual Internship Experience

Abstract The rise of the Covid-19 pandemic changed many facets of life for college students. College students were sent home in the middle of a semester, forced to quickly figure out how to learn virtually and take classes online that had been in-person. This change also resulted in a proliferation of virtual internships. The existing scholarship on virtual internships is sparse, leaving many questions, specifically, what makes a virtual internship “successful?” We examine this question by analyzing feedback of interns collected via a novel survey of students completing a virtual internship during Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021. We explore the effect of remote interning on a student’s overall satisfaction with the internship experience, duties performed, technical difficulties faced while interning virtually, as well as specific factors that may improve the virtual internship experience for students. Results suggest that virtual internships can be highly successful component of student learning. We close by providing recommendations for internship coordinators interested in supporting virtual internship experiences.