4 Conclusion and discussion This thesis significantly increased the understanding of the internship process, the role of different stakeholders and the challenges that the students face during the internship abroad that affect their learning and in consequences improvement of skills. -
How is the internship process organized?
The investigation shows that the internship process is organized differently from school to school. There is no best method to be used at the national and international level. Some schools use screening process and a long preparatory time, some meet their students only once. Nevertheless, student’s percentage presented in diagram 1 that successfully completed their internship does not show connection with the answer whether they use (or not) the preparatory time before the internship at all. In addition, I take them with a lot of consideration, because of my own experience, experience from interviewed persons and from the internship guides which shows, that good preparatory time results in higher number of students that successfully ended the internship abroad. I must admit that I had some problems in getting more answers from respondents, both from students and from mentors. This is due to different reasons, for example the form of asking questions. Too many open questions affect questionnaire completion rate, which was investigated by Sax et al., (2003). The theories and investigations helped in pointing out the important issues in the planning of the internship. At JU, and other organizations that answered the questionnaire, and were interviewed, the internship process and what’s more the learning of the students, is challenged by different factors such as limited preparatory time, lack of communication among teachers, limited contact with hosting organization. This was also investigated by Bukaliya (2012), and his main founding was that many mentors are too busy to provide effective supervision for the students during the internship process. Furthermore, at JU the number of students going abroad increases every year. Moreover, according to JU’s strategy, we want to increase the number of students going abroad from 7 up to 10%, which can be a challenge in selecting the right students. By increasing the number of students going abroad, and by not having a system that will help in selecting the appropriate students, we might risk sending students that are insufficiently prepared, which can cause a failure. Furthermore, not matching the students to the right host will result in poor improvement of skills and competences, which is a difficult dilemma for all stakeholders. Additionally, the challenge that all VET institutions in Denmark are facing is dimensionering (word in Danish) by EUD-reform 2015, introduced by Undervisnings Ministeriet (2019). According to the reform, some of the VET courses will have a quota for the number of students that would like to start GF. This means that I will have more students going abroad from one course, this will result in limitation of number of placements we have available abroad. According to Kasli & Ilban (2013) collaboration is essential in order to eliminate problems that must affect the student’s internship. I believe that figure 1, which was made to illustrate the complexity of the internship process, will be used as a helping tool at JU in the internship process. Nevertheless, I began to wonder how to use it smarter. In order to follow the diagram a lot of work is required, and already now figure 1 should be modified by adding the feedback of different stakeholders at the end of the internship process. By reflecting on what went well and wrong during the whole internship process, the feedback will help to make it easier and qualitative preparation of the internship in the future (Bukaliya (2012) referred to Tackett et al., (2001)). Furthermore, it is important to reflect on the agreed learning unit, whether was suitable for particular student (Maertz et al., 2014). The mentors also recommended this during questionnaires and interviews. Unprepared internship can cause situations with unethical aspects, and this should be avoided.
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