Internship: Navigating the Practices of an Investment Bank

Lundsteen, Natalie; Edwards, Anne

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139035699.010

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 6 publications

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“…The concept of Living Labs Traditional internships can be seen as the predecessor of LLs. These internships have been linked to employability of college graduates and gained increased importance in higher education with the prevalence of college graduates undertaking an internship growing from 17% in 1992 to over 50% in 2008 and colleges offering increasing numbers of experiential learning experiences (Lundsteen and Edwards, 2013;Gardner, 2020). The literature on internships, sometimes including research internships, is plentiful and offers broad insights in its benefits and outcomes for students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student perceptions of Living Lab research internships in the COVID-19 pandemic – a Dutch case study

van Engelenhoven,

Geiger,

Ünal

et al. 2023

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PurposeTo effectively generate solutions to today's complex challenges, cooperation between governments, industry, civil society and academia is essential. To adequately prepare students for collaboration across academic and non-academic disciplines and stakeholders, Living Labs (LLs), unique research internships have emerged in the educational systems, which are focused on generating insights for society while embedding student learning in both practice and academia. To legitimise the LLs as a method of education in the academic curriculum, it is necessary to evaluate the experience of and potential benefits for students with regard to the development of their academic, professional and personal skills. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the outcomes of participating in LLs from the student's perspective via a case study at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. A secondary aim is to evaluate the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the learning experience of the students.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed self-reported pre-and post-questionnaires into students' confidence levels with regard to their academic, professional and personal skills. A total of 35 questionnaires were conducted during the period February 2020–July 2021. The authors subsequently applied evaluation research, using a benchmarking approach, to analyse the data.FindingsThis study firstly indicates that students are most confident in their personal skills, both before and after conducting the LL, and that they further developed these due to being pushed outside of their growth zone by the various challenges posed during the LL, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, while students seem to have become more aware of their professional skills in the LL, this was the aspect on which no improvement was reported after conducting the LL, potentially due to an increased awareness of one's own room for improving professional skills outside of academia. Thirdly, students' reported academic skills improved the most during the LL, which highlights the importance of embedding academic learning both in theory and practice. Lastly, the impact of COVID-19 changed the setting of the LL which led to challenges but also opportunities with respect to research design, time investment and communication.Practical implicationsAs LLs seem to contribute to transversal and academic skill development of students, we can legitimise their increasingly common place in higher education curricula. LLs are not only beneficial for stakeholders and society as they generate new insights into societal questions, they are also of added value to students who actively collaborate with the external organisations and researchers. The LLs can thus be seen as a method of education which contributes to students' preparation for future careers, which is one of the main tasks of higher education institutions. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the LLs were conducted online, which resulted in disadvantages and advantages. Future LLs can be anticipated on more hybrid or even further online collaborations, which also opens the possibility of collaboration with international organisations located at different parts of the world. In this case, extra attention will need to be devoted to aligning expectations among the different stakeholders and specifically focussing on ways to ensure good communication.Originality/valueThis case-study is one of the first studies that specifically looks at the newly emerging concept of LL research internships and the perception of the student while conducting LLs with societal partners. Previous literature on the topic is scarce and, if existing, has mainly focused on the benefit of the partner organisation or society. Instead, we purposefully reflect on how the collaboration contributes towards students' professional development and employability. By doing so, this paper is one of the first to shed light on the benefits accrued to students’ development by participating in an LL. In addition, as the case study, unexpectedly, took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were also able to evaluate the influence of COVID-19 on the LLs and draw insightful lessons learned for future collaborations with local and international partners in an online setting.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student perceptions of Living Lab research internships in the COVID-19 pandemic – a Dutch case study

van Engelenhoven,

Geiger,

Ünal

et al. 2023

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Learning in unaccredited internship as development of interns’ ‘horizontal expertise’

Popov

2023

Vocations and Learning

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The rise of internships as a form of work experience that students pursue during their degree or after graduation has been accompanied by an upsurge of discussions, critical and favourable, on the role of internships for interns’ employment opportunities. There is a need, however, to understand the learning that goes in internship as for many students internship is a setting where work practices are encountered for the first time. Recently it has been suggested that unaccredited internship can be seen as constituting a separate work activity that needs to be examined in its own right. The aim of this article is to contribute to this literature by focusing on the learning challenges that arise in unaccredited internship and identifying the capacities that interns develop as a result of tackling these challenges. To that end, I identify a set of analytical concepts from vocational learning literature developed to understand the challenges and opportunities associated with learning across contexts (i.e. education and work): horizontal expertise, boundary-crossing, recontextualisation and identity-renegotiation. Then I analyse data on learning in unaccredited internships collected from five focus groups and two interviews (18 interns). A dialogic discourse analysis of focus group and interview discourses revealed that the interns in unaccredited internship developed an emerging capacity to learn and work competently across multiple contexts and to initiate and coordinate subsequent cycles of boundary-crossing between education and work. The paper proposes the notion of “interns’ horizontal expertise” to describe this emerging capacity that arises from learning in unaccredited internship and continues after the internship and explains how this concept differs from other expressions of horizontal expertise in the literature such as the horizontal expertise of seasoned professionals in inter-professional activities and boundary-crossing in work placements.

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‘Is there anything more to professionalism than knowledge?’—relating theory and practice in a university-based institutionalisation of a third space for preservice teachers

Lejonberg

Hatlevik

2022

Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning

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Internship: Navigating the Practices of an Investment Bank

Cited by 4 publications

References 6 publications

Student perceptions of Living Lab research internships in the COVID-19 pandemic – a Dutch case study

Student perceptions of Living Lab research internships in the COVID-19 pandemic – a Dutch case study

Learning in unaccredited internship as development of interns’ ‘horizontal expertise’

‘Is there anything more to professionalism than knowledge?’—relating theory and practice in a university-based institutionalisation of a third space for preservice teachers

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