Abstract:

An internship is a short-term practical work experience that allows a student to gain new skills and experience in the student’s field of study and gives the student an opportunity for career exploration and development. Students of most of the Software Engineering departments perform their internship at the end of their third year as an obligatory requirement for their degree. At the end of the internship period, the students are asked to fill an internship place evaluation form, which includes several sections with the purpose of evaluating internship experience. Some questions of the form use Likert-scale for the answers, while others are open ended for the students to write their opinions freely. Through this form, the students also have a chance to evaluate the hosting company and workplace characteristics, report any skill gaps they have, relate their education with their internship experience and overall share their thoughts, perceptions, opinions about their internship. We have analyzed all student responses (n=245) between years 2017 to 2021 to get an insight into student internship experience from several perspectives such as work environment conditions, skill gap, co-worker support, pay, commute etc. Our findings show that the student responses are strongly positive with regard to their internship experience. Most students described the internship as a great experience that had an impact on their learning and their understanding of real world problems and future work environment. Despite the fact that overwhelming majority of the students were able to practice the theoretical knowledge that they obtained at the university, many have also identified knowledge gaps in several knowledge areas. These findings may help higher educational institutions to adjust their curriculum to better suit the needs of students and create curriculums more relevant to industry. The results may guide hosting companies to address the issues raised by the interns thus improving the experience for future interns, which in turn helps their recruitment process.

Keywords:

Software Engineering Internship, Student Satisfaction, Workplace, Skill Gap.