Guidelines to Writing Internship Learning Objectives

Internships provide students with an opportunity to put into practice skills they have learned while in school. In addition, students should have an opportunity to enhance those skills, obtain the perspective of a work environment and benefit from a mentor or supervisor’s experience and advice.

To gain maximum benefit, the work experience must have a supervisor or mentor available to provide coaching and evaluation of the student. Before the internship begins, student and supervisor, with approval of an IT advisor, should develop several learning objectives to be met during the work experience.

Objectives are views as outcomes. In other words, what do you expect to learn or experience during your internship. Objectives are not tactics. In other words, objectives are not a punch list of tasks to be performed. Tactics should be listed for each objective. Each tactic should advance the particular objective it supports.

To begin writing Learning Objectives, first describe the job environment. You need to ascertain whether this environment will provide you with the opportunity and the means to enhance your skills and to contribute in a meaningful way. What is the name of the company? What does the company do? What department will you be working in? How does that department contribute to the company’s mission? Is there a supervisor/mentor available to guide your experience?

Next, think about what you want to gain from this work experience. Do you want to learn new programming techniques? Do you want to discover new ways to enhance web pages? Do you want to understand what maintaining a database entails as users request changes or additions? Do you want to learn how this particular company implements a new product? Use this list to develop at least three Learning Objectives.

Finally, list the specific tasks you will perform that lead to the accomplishment of each Learning Objective. List the contributions you will expect of your supervisor/mentor in guiding you in the performance of your tasks.

Make sure your type your submission. Use the spell-checker.

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Sample Learning Objective

I have arranged to work for CBI incorporated. They develop applications that run on mobile devices such as cell phones and pda’s. I want to be a programmer. I have taken all the C++ courses and two of the Java courses at Clayton State University. If I obtain this internship, I would be working for Mr. Xena. He is the supervisor in charge of developing Java-enabled cell phone applications. He has agreed to provide me with tutorials, books and on-line help. He will evaluate my work and make suggestions for improvement.

Learning Objective 1:Enhance my program design skills

Mr. Xena wants to develop an application to view real-time weather reports on Java-enabled cell phones. I will work with his team in developing the input, processing and output specifications for this application. I will develop pseudo-code for one of the program procedures. Mr. Xena will also tutor me in CBI’s development environment so that I will be able to integrate my design efforts with their documentation procedures. This will give me valuable experience in working on a team, producing material in a timely fashion, and seeing exactly how my team’s efforts fit into the broader development cycle for this project. The team does peer reviews each week. I will participate in these reviews and receive valuable feedback on my strengths and weaknesses.

Learning Objective 2: Learn a new programming language

Jame is a pure Java generator for fractals. It is fast, extensible and easy to use. Since I have experience with Java, learning to use this tool will enhance my programming skills considerably. Mr. Xena’s team uses Jame and he will provide materials and tutorials for me to get up to speed. I will get a chance to try out the Jame environment when the team implements the program design from LO 1 above.

Learning Objective 3: Experience an actual testing environment

Since I studied Testing and Quality Assurance, I look forward to actually putting into practice the tools and techniques I learned. Our development team will begin testing the new application in time for me to participate in the process. Mr. Xena assures me that I will definitely get my hands dirty in the testing and debugging process.

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