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 Activities Internship: The good internship story

Internship: The good internship story

Brief description

In this exercise, the students must prepare a mind map and a survey of their competences based on their experiences in the internship period. In concrete terms, they must formulate a number of key points regarding their understanding of a good internship story and the competences included in this.

Motivation for the exercise and required outcome

In the exercise the students will have an opportunity to focus on their own good internship stories and list some concrete competences they have used in their internship period. The purpose of the exercise is for the students to discover how their academic and personal competences and their professional practice are beginning to interact.

Performing the exercise

    • You as a teacher must provide examples of the characteristics of “a good internship story” based on the academic subject – such as a good experience, a good story from internships etc.
    • Then the students conduct an individual reflection exercise with mind mapping (handout 1) in which they brainstorm and jot down a few key points about the good internship story based on the questions in the handout. This takes 10 minutes.
    • Afterwards the students read the text in handout 2. When they have read the handout, they pair up and take turns to tell their good internship stories on the basis of their mind maps (five to six minutes per person). The listener may ask questions.
    • Once both stories have been told, the listener may reflect, comment and add unidentified (by the narrator) competences. Feedback is given regarding each student’s competences brought into play in the internship stories (five minutes per person).
    • The students must enter the competences they brought into play in the form in handout 3.
    • To end the exercise, the students may consider discussing:
      • What kind of situations do you perform best in?
      • What, do you think, are your strongest competences?
      • Which competences would you like to improve in future?
    • Students must take photos of both the mind maps and lists of competences (handouts 1 and 3) and keep these, for instance for their project reports or logs. More competences may be currently added to the competence list during the student’s internship period.

    Activities

      Examples of practice

        You will need:

        • Download the attached handouts here:
        Revised 24.11.2023
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        AU Educate