Internship: Academic objectives for the degree programme

Brief description

This exercise provides an opportunity for the students to see more clearly which competences they have used during their internship and to adapt these to specific objectives in the academic regulations. The students must reflect on and formulate how their experiences from the project placement relate to the academic objectives of their degree programme.

Motivation for the exercise and required outcome

The purpose of the exercise is to give the students an idea of the interplay between their academic and personal competences and the project placement. In the long term, the exercise will also give the students an idea as to how their academic competences may play a role in their career practice. At the same time, a potential link between teaching, study activities and exams is introduced.

Performing the exercise

As a teacher you must make the academic objectives for the course available. Distribute them in print or provide the students with a link to the academic regulations.
In groups of around four students, four relevant academic objectives (or extracts of these) are selected from the academic regulations. The students write these in the four boxes in the exercise sheet (handout 1).
Each student now writes concrete items from their internship which exemplify the four academic objectives (15 minutes). They write these on post-its, which are then placed in the boxes with the concrete academic objectives. If students have problems finding examples that relate to all objectives, they may skip the box in question.
Afterwards the students discuss the examples in the group (ten minutes). As it is likely that not all group members can identify with all concrete objectives, you may suggest to the students that they ask questions such as: What did I do? What did I learn? How can I use this in future?
Finally, you follow up in class, asking each group to speak briefly about one or two academic objectives and the examples related to them. Each group must also take photos of their own exercise sheet and share their sheets with the other groups.

Options:

The exercise may be adapted to be carried out when the students are halfway through their project placement period. This gives the students an opportunity to gain an initial insight as to which academic and personal competences they make use of in their project placement. Through an open dialogue with their fellow students and their teacher, the students may become more conscious of their own learning outcome from the internship and how their fellow students’ stories may potentially add to this. If the exercise is carried out halfway through the internship, the students have the possibility to adjust their approach to this, which may create a better overall experience and a greater outcome.

MORE INFORMATION

Activities

Examples of practice

You will need:

Post-it's
Download the attached handout here (should be printed):

Handout 1

Search:

Revised 24.11.2023

AU Educate