The World Is Our Classroom: Developing a Model for International
Virtual Internships - The Global Innovations Project
Paul Doyle
1a
, Brian Keegan
1b
, Damian Gordon
1c
, Anna Becevel
1d
, Paul J. Gibson
2e
,
Zhiying Jiang
2f
and Dympna O’Sullivan
1g
1
Applied Social Computing Network Group, School of Computer Science, Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
2
Department of Computer Science, Telecom Sud Paris, Institute Mines Telecom Paris, France
3
College of Information Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China
Keywords: Computer Science Education, Virtual and Remote Internships.
Abstract: In the aftermath of COVID-19, remote working has become the norm, and graduates now need an even wider
range of skills, which traditional classrooms and internships do not always provide. Working in multiple time
zones, within global multi-cultural teams, and only ever meeting colleagues through online technology are
just some of the challenges, which require a new type of global graduate. Transversal skills including
leadership, collaboration, innovation, digital, green, organization and communication skills are critical. The
disruption from COVID-19 also presents unprecedented opportunities to develop more inclusive approaches
to internships and international experiences, to level the playing field for students with special needs, from
underrepresented groups or with caring commitments. In this position paper, we present a new Global
Innovation internship model that has the aim of allowing students to complete technology internships and
projects by working together virtually on real world challenges, guided by experienced industry and academic
mentors. The model is being developed as part of an Erasmus+ funded project, and the partnership includes
seven Higher Education Institutions from six different countries around the world. This position paper
describes the design and development of a pilot programme of the Global Innovations internship model.
1 INTRODUCTION
An internship is a work experience offered by an
organization for a limited period of time. Internships
are pedagogically founded upon experiential
learning, where the learner actively creates
“knowledge through direct experience that is
meaningful to the student with guided reflection and
analysis” (Kolb, 1984). They provide opportunities
through which students experience their chosen
professions before formally entering them.
Internships have become commonplace in higher
education and are often an embedded part of
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3877-7432
b
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0445-108X
c
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3875-4065
d
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7704-8975
e
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0474-0666
f
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8840-7056
g
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2841-9738
computing programmes. Internships usually take the
form of supervised introductory career opportunities
provided in partnership between academic
institutions and professional organizations.
Internships provide significant benefits for
employers, academic institutions and students.
Graduate recruiters use internships as a means of
developing future talent pipelines, bringing
innovation and new ideas into their organizations as
well as giving students a real sense of what is
involved in working in a particular company or sector
of industry. Academic institutions can use internships
to forge collaborative relationships with industry, to
Doyle, P., Keegan, B., Gordon, D., Becevel, A., Gibson, P., Jiang, Z. and O’Sullivan, D.
The World Is Our Classroom: Developing a Model for International Virtual Internships - The Global Innovations Project.
DOI: 10.5220/0011075900003182
In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2022) - Volume 1, pages 297-303
ISBN: 978-989-758-562-3; ISSN: 2184-5026
Copyright
c
 2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
297

gain an insight into contemporary industry practices
with knock-on positive impacts on teaching. Students
who return from internships are often better prepared
to take on larger pieces of work such as dissertations.
From a student perspective, they afford the
opportunity to engage in the practical application of
theories learned in the classroom, to reinforce
technical competencies and allow for development of
other skills including communication, teamwork,
time management and interpersonal skills.
Internships are proven differentiators with students
who have completed them having a significant
advantage on graduation (Aasir, 2018, Eyler 2009,
Silva, 2018).
The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a shift to
remote working and remote learning worldwide.
Unfortunately, many internship opportunities were
cancelled or had changes made to the internship
scope. In many computing programmes, students
completed online or virtual internships. Virtual
internships predate the pandemic. One of the first
reported virtual internships in the literature is by
Cheney in 2008 (Cheney, 2008), where students
undertook a virtual internship that facilitated the
development of technology skills. Others have
worked to incorporate virtual internships into MOOC
programmes (
Pillutla, 2019). Advantages of virtual
internships are increased access to a more diverse and
geographically wider talent pool from an employer
point of view. From a student perspective, a virtual
internship can build the skills necessary for remote
work, for example digital literacy and digital
professionalism, telecommunication, self-discipline,
and independence. Recent findings have also shown
that students on virtual internships had more access to
senior staff within organizations - traditionally, only
those interns at head office locations had the
opportunity to engage with the most senior leaders.
However, in travelling less, senior leaders could
commit to the sessions such as inductions, virtual
coffees, and networking sessions (Woo, 2021,
Collings, 2021).
In this position paper, we describe the design and
development of a new model of virtual internships.
The Global Innovations (GI) internship model aims to
allow students to complete computing internships by
working together virtually in international teams on
real world challenges guided by experienced industry
mentors and academic mentors. The model is being
developed as part of an Erasmus+ project and the
partnership includes seven higher education
institutions from six different countries (Ireland,
France, Sweden, Slovenia, China, South Korea),
industry professionals and remote learning experts.
The model aims to address the challenges posed to the
traditional internship model during COVID-19, to
develop a shared understanding beyond national
borders and to design innovative curricula to create
graduates that are not only capable of adapting to
hybrid and online workplaces and situations, but that
were specifically trained to work within it. The
ultimate aim of the research will produce an open and
comprehensive toolkit for the implementation of
remote and hybrid internships including a set of
guidelines,
training materials and reusable artefacts
(e.g. resources to support recruitment, onboarding,
professional development, and checklists for industry
and academic mentors).
In the next section, we provide context on the
importance of internship programmes, the
pedagogical approaches that underpin them and
discuss the emergence of virtual internships. In
Section 3 we outline the GI internship model and
describe the design and development of a pilot
implementation of the programme. We conclude in
Section 4 with a description of insights,
recommendations, and challenges in delivering such
a programme.
2 BACKGROUND
Internships are based around the concept of
‘experiential learning’, an engaged learning process
whereby students “learn by doing” and by reflecting
on the experience (Kolb, 1984). The pedagogy of
learning through experience originated in the 19th
century (Champagne, 2006, Furco 2004). In (Kolb,
2001), Kolb, et al provided an explanation of the
Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) - “ELT
emphasises the central role that experience plays in
the learning process, an emphasis that distinguishes
ELT from other learning theories. The term
“experiential” is used therefore to differentiate ELT
both from cognitive learning theories, which tend to
emphasise cognition over affect, and behavioural
learning theories that deny any role for subjective
experience in the learning process”.
The introduction of experiential learning as a
pedagogy challenged previous academic theories. It
challenged the “cognitive style” of “teaching through
lecturing” that was and still is prevalent in academic
classrooms (Furco 2002). It also challenged the “one-
directional” method of teaching and learning and
raised questions about the role of academic
institutions in student’s learning process while on
internship. The literature reveals several important
considerations in the development of any internship
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programme: Firstly, the work environment is often
substantially different from what the students are
taught or what they experience in the classroom
(Trede, 2013). Second, academic institutions must
prepare the students for the internship work
environment (D'Abate, 2009). Third, although there
is no direct transfer of knowledge from the teacher to
the students in most internship courses, the academic
institution should take an active role in the learning
process, for example through a mentoring process.
Internship programs should coordinate with the
industry internship sites to manage this mentoring
process and thus facilitate the learning process
(Trede, 2013). Finally, experiential learning should
complement and enhance learning that takes place in
the classroom (Morris, 2020).
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, working
remotely is now mainstream and has also given rise
to an increase in remote internships (Jeske, 2020).
Before the pandemic, growth in online education,
advancements in remote-work technologies, diversity
of the workforce, and the need for flexibility in
location and time were key drivers of remote
internships (Jeske, 2019, Khushwant, 2021). Virtual
internships resemble traditional internships in most
aspects, except that communication takes place via
messaging services or interactive software
communication. The literature identifies much work
on successful virtual internship programmes (Woo,
2021, D'Abate, 2009, Khushwant 2021), but also
outlines a number of common challenges associated
with virtual internships. A key challenge is the
authenticity of the experience in simulating
professional workplaces. The use of mentorship to
provide the guidance necessary for interns to make
meaningful connections between professional
knowledge elements is vital to overcome this
challenge. Furthermore, mentors need to be available
to engage with virtual interns on a regular basis to
foster engagement and prevent drop-out in an online
environment. Other skills such as interpersonal
communication, cultural understanding of how to
relate to individuals from different cultures, time and
performance management needed to organise
meetings across time zones are critical in the online
environment and interns need guidance on these
aspects (Jeske, 2016). Careful preparation and
planning are also required to enable virtual interns to
manage their work effectively (and possibly entirely
independently). In the absence of everyday
interactions, the materials, instructions, and task
descriptions need to be well prepared (Jeske, 2017).
The provision of opportunities for interns to work
collaboratively on projects in an online environment
is a key requirement for preparing students for online
or hybrid workplaces post-graduation and should be
provided by industry partners (Gill, 2020).
Our work on developing the GI internship model
aims to tackle these challenges. In the next section we
provide an overview of the GI internship model and
describe our approach and the design and
development of a pilot implementation of the model.
3 APPROACH
The GI internship model is focused on simulation of
an industry-based internship experience for students
in computing and other technology-based disciplines.
The GI internship is run within existing validated
academic internship modules at each partner
institution to ensure a valid learning environment for
students is achieved, and to ensure an assessment
model consistent with traditional internships is
performed. It borrows essential traits from both
academic project-based modules, and industry-based
internships. The GI internship is also designed to
buffer students from the recent fluctuations of the
industry-based internship environment that were
evident in the first two years of the recent COVID-19
pandemic where technology-based companies have
been forced to undergo rapid transformations in their
work structures and cultures. These transformations
include the requirement for establishing a remote
working culture, reliance on video conferencing for
meetings, an increase in use of non-verbal digital
based collaboration, and increased emphasis on chat
applications and other social media platforms for
social interaction. As a by-product of these
transformations, some of the key advantages of the
industry-based internship model are potentially under
threat, such as the establishing of professional role-
models within the work environment, the creation of
social contacts and the development of work based
social norms. Our research in developing the GI
internship model has the following aims:
1. To design a virtual internship which simulates a
collaborative environment where students work
on an industry project, but with additional
academic support to help create graduates that
are capable of adapting to hybrid and online
workplaces and situation.
2. To construct an inclusive, multicultural,
international, and entrepreneurial experience for
students through our collaboration with
European and Asian universities.
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3. To upskill academic and industry mentors to
ensure the successful implementation of the
virtual internship program.
4. To produce an open toolkit for the
implementation of remote and hybrid
internships including a set of guidelines,
training materials and reusable artefacts.
3.1 GI Project Phases
The GI internship model will be developed as part of
an Erasmus+ project over a two-year period. The
project has four distinct but overlapping phases as
shown in Figure 1. The initial phase is the pilot phase
which will be run for 6 months to obtain real-world
data of a simulated virtual internship including an
understanding of required upskilling for industry and
academic stakeholders, while the second phase
focuses on evaluation of the pilot against the project
aims. The third phase will take the combined learning
of the pilot, prior experience of each of the partner
universities running similar modules, and a review of
the literature to ensure a pedagogically sound module
is created. The final phase focuses on the
implementation of the model across multiple
universities in order to develop a shared
understanding of virtual and hybrid internships
beyond national borders and to ensue that the model
can be successfully operationalised.
3.2 The Pilot in Context
The GI pilot provides an early opportunity within the
project to evaluate how the project aims may be best
achieved. In the creation of a virtual internship, a
start-up company model was the most feasible type of
business environment which could be best simulated.
Figure 1: Global Innovations project phases.
While a typical SME will have established and
existing employees within a company to help mentor
and act as role models for interns, start-ups are often
formed with minimal hierarchy and with limited
support structure, procedures and access to senior
resources. The core ethos of the project is that it must
operate as a new start-up company with a specific
technology-based project to focus on. All aspects of
the start-up will be run like a business under the
direction of the managing director (MD) who will be
appointed from industry but who will have limited
contact hours with the students. The MD will be
recruited based on their experience in business
development within small start-up companies and
will be the primary point of contact for the students
on internship. The MD will also oversee an academic
staff member appointed as a consulting chief
technical officer (CTO), and a staff officer from an
Industry Engagement Office who will act as a
business development manager (BDO). These three
roles will be the core of the start-up company.
Students will be recruited from standard internship
programmes. The BDO will secure access to support
services for the team, including access to industry
consultants in the areas of project management,
marketing, business development, human resources,
and staff training. The MD, with the support of the
CTO and BDO, will control the use of all services and
resources.
The GI internship team will simulate the work
environment of a new company which has limited
resources, but with the added benefit of academic
scaffolding. This scaffolding will be in the form of
academic mentors who act as experts in the project
domain and the creation of a structured internship
plan for the students to follow which will focus on
developmental workshops and professional training
to help students develop the core skills required to
achieve the learning outcomes of an internship. Using
a start-up model, a company culture is created where
the team takes more direct responsibility and
ownership for the work they are undertaking. This
culture is developed by establishing a client for the
project who has a specific requirement in mind, and
who will meet with the team to provide input and
feedback regarding the progress being made. The
concept of academic grading is removed from the
project deliverable as the output should be client
facing. Grading within the internship is performed in
the same way as other internships and is performed
separately using our internship support structure and
reflective assessment methodology.
The GI team is treated like any other company
involved in an academic internship programme. The
scaffolding approach ensures that the students work
within a diverse team environment, which is
multicultural, international and multidisciplinary.
This is achieved through our recruitment process
which requires students to interview for the position
from multiple schools, and multiple international
partners, and via a process, where students are split
into two groups, which will rotate between working
online and onsite at a campus incubation location.
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3.3 The Pilot Design Methodology
Context
The start-up company will include several key roles
designed to establish a company environment and to
ensure that there are sufficient support structures to
facilitate the student learning environment. The MD,
appointed from industry, will have between 6-9
contact hours with the team each, and will perform
the basic management duties for the internship
groups, structuring the work activities of the team.
The CTO will be appointed from the academic staff
to act as a discipline technology expert to provide
high-level guidance and input as the teams explore
technology solutions. The DBO role is run by our
Industry engagement officer who will work with
companies that support start-up companies and
facilitate the team by providing access to workshops,
training and services designed to support an
entrepreneurial business in its early stage of
development. A structure will also be developed for
the internship to ensure that the learning outcomes of
the internship module are achieved.
With the basic structure of the start-up company
defined in Figure 2, the following process was
followed to develop and assess the pilot programme.
3.3.1 Recruitment
The business focus of the company will be on a
technology-based project sourced from a non-
governmental organization (NGO), Charity or
organization focused on supporting the United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).
Figure 2: Global Innovations internship pilot company
structure.
For the pilot, the client will be a research group
with a focus on applied and socially responsible
technology within the university who proposed a
project on smart energy conservation. For future
projects, an Expression of Interest (EOI) will be
issued, seeking input from the wider community.
Once a project brief is finalized, the company engages
with the internship process of the university to
interview and select students to work within the Gl
team as per standard internship recruitment
procedure. Students will be interviewed with a view
to the roles within the team they will occupy. The
interview process will assess the students in terms of
software design and development skills, analytic
skills, knowledge of business process,
communication and leadership skills.
3.3.2 Team Development
An essential element in the creation of an internship
environment is the securing of resources from
industry and the business development agencies to
provide industry engagement opportunities for the
newly formed team. These services include accessing
national agencies support programmes such as
Enterprise Ireland and the academic incubation
centres within the university, which are specifically
designed to support and advise small start-up
companies. Additional resources are provided in the
form of specified and limited hours of consultancy
from our university industry partners. The MD of the
start-up will work to ensure that these limited industry
resources are used effectively to support the students
and provide access to experts in the field of human
resources, software development, software testing,
project management and business development.
Additional academic sources from within the
university will be used to provide targeted workshops
to help develop both transversal skills such as design
thinking, problem solving, teambuilding, and goal
setting, in additional to more general technical skills
such as understanding ethics within technology, data
privacy, followed by more targeted technology
seminars directly relevant to the project being
developed.
3.3.3 Assessment
The pilot will be assessed to determine how well it
met the project aims and objectives and to understand
how it might be developed for deployment across the
European and Asian project partners. Different forms
of assessment will be used to help determine the
strengths and weaknesses of the pilot, allowing for the
assessment to be considered from different
perspectives. A specific strength of the pilot model is
that the assessment of the students will be done in
parallel with and using the same assessment approach
by the internship academic coordinator. This provides
an independent and external analysis of how the
students performed with respect to achieving the
learning outcomes compared to standard internships.
A second and equally independent assessment of the
pilot will be performed by one of our European
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301

university partners who are not involved in the
development or running of the pilot. This assessment
will probe into the cost of the internship model, the
structure of the company and how it performed, and
review methods of improving the overall experience
of the internships itself.
4 CONCLUSIONS
The merits of internships are well known and proven
differentiators which offer significant advantages to
students who undertake them. This position paper
presents a model for the implementation of a virtual
internship which not only replicates a complete work
environment but provides additional academic
scaffolding support structures to help create graduates
that can adapt to hybrid and online workplaces and
situations.
The GI internship model strives to create a
collaborative internship environment based on
industry best practice, models of experiential learning
but with greater academic support. The model
identifies and addresses the challenges associated
with virtual internships such as the authenticity of the
experience and access to industry role-models and
experts. The environment promotes interculturalism
by design and fosters an entrepreneurial experience.
A start-up company is seen as favourable for the
model due to its minimal hierarchy and limited
support structure. The start-up company include
several key roles designed to establish a company
environment and to ensure that there are sufficient
support structures to facilitate the student learning
environment. This provides a uniform experience
and facilitates student access to experts and core staff.
The model is seamlessly integrated within an
existing validated academic internship modules . The
approach will buffer students from recent fluctuations
in industry-based internship environments caused by
COVID-19 and a move towards remote and hybrid
workplaces, offering safeguards over the
environment and the student experience. The model
offers unique support mechanisms via academic
expertise which provides scaffolding not seen in
traditional internships. This support is implemented
by means of targeted workshops and training to
develop core skills. Training is not assessed but
instead used to develop a culture of engagement and
problem solving for the client. Reflective assessment
is used to determine the success of the students’
performance and learning experience. Students work
in groups and utilise a blended work environment
including both online and onsite activities.
The ongoing pilot will be assessed to determine
how well it met its aims and objectives and to
understand how it might be developed in the future to
run across multiple universities in Europe and Asia.
This will involve detailed interviews with the
participating students, industry and academic
stakeholders. A particular focus will be on the
upskilling requirements of academic and industry
stakeholders to determine specific training needs. A
second and independent assessment of the pilot will
be performed by a European university partner not
involved in the development or running of the pilot.
This assessment will probe more into the cost of the
internship model for academic and industry
organizations, an analysis the internship company
performed, and review methods of improving the
overall experience of the internships itself. The
research will produce an open and comprehensive
toolkit for the implementation of remote and hybrid
internships including a set of guidelines, training
materials and reusable artefacts (e.g. resources to
support recruitment, onboarding, professional
development and assessment).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Global Innovation Teams project (Agreement
number: 2021-1-IE02-Ka220-HED-000023212) is
co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the
European Union. The European Commission’s
support for the production of this publication does not
constitute an endorsement of the contents, which
reflect the views only of the authors, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use
which may be made of the information contained
therein.
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