Supporting Students Beyond the Pandemic – Lessons From Community Internships

Conference: The Asian Conference on Education (ACE2022)
Title: Supporting Students Beyond the Pandemic – Lessons From Community Internships
Stream: Higher Education
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Authors:
Tai Chong Toh, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Abstract:

Internships are widely recognised as one of the high impact practices in tertiary education, that can enhance student learning through the curation of purposeful and engaging learning environments. While most internships have focused on enhancing employability, I have recently developed a new internship module, Community Internship, which provides our students with an opportunity to engage and work with registered Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Operating in multidisciplinary teams and supported by supervision from an academic staff and internship supervisor, this module allows students to gain a deeper understanding of the community partner as they connect their academic knowledge to practice. In this study, my research questions examine: 1) what students have learned from the internship, 2) what are the challenges encountered by students as they work-from-home (WFH) and 3) which pedagogical elements have supported student learning. As I triangulated the data from students’ reflection, perception survey, internship reports and supervisors’ evaluation, the findings have provided key information on the value of informal learning values of internships. First, students reported improvements in social, practical and integrative skills, while supervisors observed that students demonstrated clear enhancements in technical skills and professional growth. Secondly, students reflected that the transition to WFH has limited social engagement, reduced opportunities at work, impacted well-being and communication among team members. Lastly, the features that greatly supported student learning include regular internship meetings, meaningful assessments and peer support within the interdisciplinary team. As work environments move away from the physical environment, we need to redesign how we support our students.



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