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The present paper aims to outline the case for diversity gains for employers via virtual internships, while recognizing the role of government and educational support.

In the context of Australian employment statistics about people with disabilities, the actors, key issues and barriers to utilizing virtual internships are explored.

The results of an online survey with 24 career, access and inclusion service officers at Australian universities suggested that the large majority were unfamiliar with virtual internships, as many shared concerns about what kind of learning and mentoring opportunities such computer-mediated internships may provide to their students.

Employers embracing new e-HR developments may be particularly well situated to adopt virtual internships and combine these effectively with existing diversity initiatives, many of which already include mentoring and learning opportunities. A closer dialogue with career, access and inclusion services may further support a fruitful knowledge exchange and reduce the concerns of educational representatives about virtual internships and their usefulness to increase the employment prospects of people with disabilities.

At present, virtual internship programs remain the exception, and are often not connected with diversity initiatives, nor are virtual internships well known among student services. However, virtual internships represent a promising opportunity for employers who wish to access untapped national (or even international) talent pools and thus candidates that would benefit from and contribute to their diversity initiatives.

Recent reports on accounting education have observed that an increasing difference exists between what students are being taught and what accounting practitioners actually do. Yet, despite such criticisms of accounting education, methods exist that help blend study and practice more effectively. Included among the methods are accounting internships and related cooperative work‐ study programs. This study was conducted at the college of Business and Economics, United Arab Emirates University to investigate the effect of student internships on subsequent academic performance. The post‐internship course performance of students with accounting internship experience was compared to that of non‐internship students matched on the basis of grade point averages (GPA) and credit hours completed. The results indicated that the internship students performed significantly better than the non‐internship students in accounting courses, and in overall GPA subsequent to the internship semester. These findings contradict prior research and support accounting internships as tools to enhance students’ knowledge and motivation.

Internal audit student internship programmes are an integral part of the curriculum for Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) target schools of US universities. The internship concept is explored ‐ how it is implemented, its characteristics, and its advantages and disadvantages – at six target schools. It is concluded that the benefits, to the items, employers and academic institutions, outweigh the potential disadvantages.

Professional program assessment is necessary in an accreditation process, in order to ensure educational quality and public accountability. One avenue of assessment is through an internship. The challenge is to determine how evidence from this indirect learning experience can aid in accreditation. The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of internship supervisor evaluation feedback within the accreditation process for a professional interior design degree program.

In this study, internship assessment was provided by feedback from intern supervisors. Ten years of supervisor feedback were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a content analysis of supervisor comments.

Two hundred forty-seven internship supervisor evaluation documents were analyzed. Overall, supervisors positively evaluated the performance of the intern as Good to Excellent. A majority of supervisors (91%) provided comments that were positive yet vague, as most could not differentiate between the intern and the intern's performance.

This study links experiential learning to its evidence that can be used in an accreditation process. The challenges for educators in developing an assessment tool useful for accreditation evidence and to be shared by multiple program degree stakeholders are also described.

Research on internships usually focuses on the student's viewpoint. This study is original in that it examines the use of internship supervisor's evidence in program accreditation.

The perspectives of industry instructors from a case enterprise were adopted to analyze various contexts of internship implementation and to examine feasible strategies for incorporating internships in the human resource development process.

A Taiwanese enterprise stationed in China was selected for case study. This study focused on the 2019 summer internship program. Interviews were conducted with 23 industry instructors.

(1) Units should effectively employ interns by guiding them to learn by doing tasks. (2) Provide training and assign personal industry instructors to guide interns in learning by doing, thereby establishing workplace relationships in advance. (3) High-level leaders and senior managers must pay close attention to internship results and inspire industry instructors and interns to perform internship tasks. (4) Managers of internship units must participate in interviews to select potential employees that satisfy unit requirements. (5) Opportunities for university teachers to interact with enterprises and recommend interested students who learn knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) that fulfill enterprise requirements should be increased.

Enterprises must systematically plan internship tasks, recruitment and selection, as well as practices and reports if they wish to employ interns as potential human resource.

This study used the practical perspectives of industry instructors to establish the contexts and strategies of intern training for human resource development. The results of this study are expected to provide a reference for enterprises in planning internship workplaces and increase their willingness to employ interns.

This chapter uses macro policy analysis conducted at the Center for Teacher Education Research (CTER), Beijing Normal University to analyze the decision-making concerning teacher internship from the perspective of national policy. Internship, a teacher preparation policy initiative in China, is both needed to ease the teacher shortages in rural and poor areas of China and to create new models of teaching practice. Attention is then given to two aspects in policy implementation – student teachers’ learning and teachers’ multiple forms of instruction – from the perspective of teacher preparation. To conclude, the chapter offers some summary statements having to do with the policy debate and the implementation of the internship in China.

An internship is an essential part of vocational-oriented degree programs because it enhances the employability of graduates and prepares them for career development. Thus, it is important to understand how students view internships and whether they are satisfied with their internship experience. This paper explores the effects of organizational and individual factors on internship satisfaction.

Based on a literature review on internship, we propose a theoretical model in which organizational factors, including supervisor support and task clarity, and individual factors, including interns' perceived functional value and perceived social value, can lead to internship satisfaction while task clarity, perceived functional value and perceived social value can affect interns' self-initiative behavior. The proposed model was tested using responses from 161 Chinese students in Macao SAR.

The results of structural equation modeling indicated that supervisor support and perceived social value had direct and significant impacts on internship satisfaction while task clarity and perceived functional value had direct and significant impacts on interns' self-initiative behavior. Additionally, supervisor support significantly influenced task clarity, perceived functional value and perceived social value.

The paper identifies that supervisor support has a strong and significant impact on internship satisfaction. Additionally, the current study indicates that organizations should pay great attention to appoint the right work supervisors who are able to assign appropriate tasks to interns, provide clear guidance and facilitate social interaction between interns and other people.

The purpose of this research paper is to analyse the internship expectations gap amongst the three main internship stakeholders: employers (company supervisors), academic supervisors and students, in an effort to detect the variables which could assist closing the gap between students' perceptions and the labour market employers and then, between the academic supervisors in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the students. This paper analyses firstly, the variables that determine students' perceptions and overall satisfaction with the internships. After, it examines the differences with the employers' expectations of the interns' performance. Finally, this paper analyses the variables that determine the academic supervisors in HEIs grading of the interns with the overall satisfaction about the students' internship performance. This research serves as a guide for the improvement, refinement and expansion of university internship programme design together with internship best practices definition to close the expectation gaps between the HEIs and the Business World.

Two quantitative surveys were designed to measure students' and employers' perceptions of the internships. Additionally, one semi-structured qualitative interview is performed to deepen understanding of each student's perception of the internship. The authors perform a triangular analysis of students' perceptions and employers' (company supervisors) and academic supervisors' expectations. A T-test analyses the differences between cognitive, transversal and social skills developed in an internship as perceived by students and employers (company supervisors). Finally, linear regressions are run both to identify the variables that determine the students' internship overall satisfaction and also detect the variables that determine the final internship grade assigned by the academic supervisor from the university.

The authors highlight the following interesting findings. While the students feel that the internships are highly useful and perceive that they were fully integrated into the company's culture, they also state that they learn how to develop their transversal skills much more than the cognitive skills learnt in the whole study programme in their degrees. In parallel, employers (company supervisors), for their part, perceive that students have strong social skills and adjust perfectly to the company's culture, but expected the students to have more creativity and cognitive skills. Finally, the academic supervisor's value the students' written skills together with the company's supervisor valuation more than the students' transversal skills. These main expectation gaps detected must be solved to improve internship outcomes and closing the gaps between the Higher Education and Business World. These findings consolidate existing research and add more quantitative results contextualised to Spanish Higher Education Institutions.

The limitations of this research are that it only embeds a HEIs in Spain and the sample should be enlarged with more universities not only from Spain but also from around the world. Thus, the findings in this research can be used to improve the internship programme in this HEIs and its best practices, however they cannot be extrapolated to other HEIs still. Nevertheless, other HEIs can learn from this experience. Regarding the surveys these can be reviewed and homogenised for the student's perception items to be more aligned with the company supervisor's expectations and the academic supervisor's requirements of an internship. As implications, the authors have divided them into theoretical and practical. From the theoretical point of view, there needs to be more research about internships done in Economics, Law and Business Degrees field. From the practical point of view, the authors highlight several implications. First, HEIs must develop internship programmes further and promote the three stakeholders, employer–academic supervisor–student communication more fluid. This communication flow will maximize and align both employer and academic supervisor expectations about the students' performance in their internships. This way, student perceptions of their internship experience will improve and align further. Second, internships must be promoted in the Economics and Business Degrees as they are a unique opportunity for students to apply cognitive, transversal and social skills acquired in their study programmes, developing themselves as future professionals. Third, there is a growing need for HEIs to strengthen links with different companies, not only to teach students the skills employers' value but also to ensure that graduates are aware of what is happening in the labour market. Finally, through the internships developing further, academic supervisors must open their assessment to the students' professional skills (critical thinking, creativity, capacity to solve short term problems efficiently,) aligning with labour market needs.

This paper is significant because it shows the growing need for universities to strengthen links with a variety of companies (Business World). Internships are becoming compulsory, having assigned a high percentage of European Credits Transfer System (ECTS) credits to students' Grade Point Average (GPA) in Economics, Law and Business. This research work shows HEIs should improve internship design to close the gap between Higher Education's supply of graduates and the business world's demand for adequately prepared professionals. The results in this paper can help the academic actors start improving the internship design and best practices definition.

Purpose – To explicate how to design a digital internship that encourages both the teacher candidate and the K-12 student to participate in problem-based learning. Framed by the theories of academic motivation and new literacies, this chapter presents templates to demonstrate how a digital internship can be designed that results in the learning goals of both the students and the teacher candidates being met.

Design – Digital internships provide teacher candidates with the opportunity to teach K-12 students online, observe licensed teachers design and employ lessons, and analyze this pedagogical learning space, yet education preparation programs (EPPs) fail to harness this rich learning experience. This chapter makes a case for why EPPs benefit from participating in digital internships, how they can become involved, and results from this learning experience.

Findings – Findings from digital internship research studies indicate that despite frustrations, online mentoring opportunities give teacher candidates a chance to reflect on the work needed to create relationships necessary to instruct effectively. Through them, candidates can also develop dispositions of new literacies and bridge theory and practice in EPPs. Furthermore, digital internships may serve to empower teacher candidates and support them in being successful in teacher preparation coursework.

Practical Implications – Digital internships contribute to best practices in teaching digital literacies by providing examples of how EPPs can design curriculum that situates teacher candidates to observe pedagogy in online environments. These internships provide candidates the opportunity to mentor K-12 students in these spaces and provide teacher candidates time to process how they can best motivate students and give specific feedback to encourage learning. Furthermore, digital internships can include primary resources to enrich units of instruction across content areas and grade levels.

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of engineering student interns, as well as the perceptions of internship supervisors.

The study was designed to investigate internships as a complex social phenomenon in the field, through the use of an inductive qualitative design grounded in a naturalistic paradigm guided by theories of learning and socialisation. The researchers used semistructured interviews of 24 engineering student interns and 10 internship supervisors at various organisations.

Students reported varying levels of learning about how a company works and how to work with others in a professional environment as the results of their internships. The researchers found that students did not look for connections between the classroom and the workplace, making it difficult to apply skills from one setting to the other. Supervisors received very little training, if any, prior to supervising interns. They were unsure how much work students could handle during an internship and perceived that making sure students had a positive experience was part of their role. In addition, internship goals for companies and educational institutions did not necessarily align.

Both students and supervisors would benefit from more formal preparation or training prior to the start of an internship. Educational institutions and companies would also benefit by collaborating to better understand each other's goals and coordinating student experiences to foster learning and positive outcomes.

This paper emphasises the importance of helping students understand the nature of work and the importance of developing relationships in the workplace.