Abstract:

Self-efficacy and Self-esteem of readiness are important factors for students to succeed in an internship. These factors affect how an individual handles new situations and possible threats. By testing their theoretical knowledge in a practical context, the internship can have a positive effect on the student's experience of being successful in working life.
Work integrated learning is one approach that may support students progression towards increased readiness for working life. What characterizes work readiness and how can it be achieved?

The study was conducted at the bachelor's degree programs ‘Digital Media’ and ‘3D-animation and visualisation’, at University West in Sweden. During the fifth semester students have the opportunity to carry out internships in a workplace. These internships are conducted as a course at the university which also gives higher education credits. The time spent on the course is split between the workplace (80%) and the university (20%). Every fortnight the students meet with faculty staff at a seminar to discuss a given topic. The purpose of the course is to give the student the opportunity to integrate theory from the university studies with practical experience in a workplace.

The students spend the majority of the time in the workplace however every second week they meet in a seminar on campus, in which they discuss their experiences in the workplace. As a preparation for the seminar, the students are given different thematic questions to reflect on. Based on all students answers, in the seminar the students reflect on similarities and differences in each others’ texts. Additionally, a supplementary summarizing question is given to the students during the seminar.
Prior to the start of the course, the students make their own estimation of how ready they feel they are for working life on a scale from 1-10. After the course, the estimation is revised along the same scale. In addition to this estimation, conversations are conducted between the students, regarding readiness for working life.

The study is a mixed methods approach and consists of three sets of data: five group interviews á three hours with 7-15 participants in seminars, two online surveys and 50 written reports from all together 15 students.

In the paper we report on how students gradually increase their feeling of being more sure of what type of work tasks they prefer to do in the future, which skills they already have or need to develop further, and what type of workplace they want to work at related to for instance: level of creative freedom, level of collegiality, type of governance etc. These insights, we argue, are vital characteristics of students’ experience of ‘readiness for working life’. We discuss how these characteristics are important aspects of self efficacy and how they are related to the design of the course and ultimately a work integrated learning approach to teaching and learning within higher education.

Keywords:

Readiness, internship, WIL, Work Integrated Learning.