HomeBlogWork-Integrated Learning Lining It All Up: Creating Alignment Between Learning Objectives and Assignments in Internship Courseworkby CJ Eubanks FlemingJuly 30, 2024 Share: Section NavigationSkip section navigationIn this sectionBlog Home AI and Engaged Learning Assessment of Learning Capstone Experiences CEL News CEL Retrospectives CEL Reviews Collaborative Projects and Assignments Community-Based Learning Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity ePortfolio Feedback First-Year Experiences Global Learning Health Sciences High Impact Practices Immersive Learning Internships Learning Communities Mentoring Relationships Online Education Place-Based Learning Professional and Continuing Education Publishing SoTL Reflection and Metacognition Relationships Residential Learning Communities Service-Learning Student-Faculty Partnership Studying EL Supporting Neurodivergent and Physically Disabled Students Undergraduate Research Work-Integrated Learning Writing Transfer in and beyond the University Style Guide for Posts to the Center for Engaged Learning Blog I have been partnering recently with Elon’s Center for Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) as well as the Student Professional Development Center (SPDC) to focus on the pedagogy of internships, and specifically best practices for writing and assessing learning objectives in internship courses. I’d like to share some of our main takeaways from this work that might be helpful to you as you design your internship courses. Jill McSweeney, Assistant Director of CATL, encourages internship mentors to engage in backward design on internship courses by first considering what students will hopefully be able to know and do at the end of the internship (Wiggins and McTighe 2011). This then allows you to consider the primary goals for the course as well as what summative assessments you will expect of students such that they can show their new knowledge at the conclusion of the experience. Backward design also prompts you to consider formative assessments along the way that will help students to grow their knowledge and practice their skills. In terms of considering the outcomes that you want for students, internships are a unique pedagogical place relative to the typical classroom environment. As an academic mentor your role is to help the student connect their hands-on experiences with their classroom learning, but the student is also working independently from you in a work site with an outside supervisor. Thus as you consider the students’ goals for the experience, there are multiple angles to consider, including the student’s: Technical role and responsibilities at the site, Personal growth and reflection on their experience, Development as a professional and career exploration, and Connections to academic work, prior knowledge, and disciplinary content. Coming from an academic background, I tend to focus on reflection as an essential component of experiential education. Multiple models suggest that students gain the most from experiences like internship when they can connect hands-on learning to their prior knowledge and then use reflection practices to integrate their new experiences (Kiser 2014; Moore 2023). Coming from the professional side, my colleague Nancy Carpenter, Director of Internships for Arts and Sciences in the SPDC, focuses more on development of what the literature calls “boundary crossing competencies” such as critical thinking, project management, and teamwork (Gardner and Maietta 2020). These competencies primarily address work-readiness and career development. As you can see, there are multiple competing priorities all of which are valuable to the student. As you develop objectives for the course, it is important to include aspects of each of the angles, and to include the student in the conversation. Each student may be coming to the internship for different reasons, and thus might prioritize each aspect differently. I typically meet with students at least once and sometime multiple times to create and revise a syllabus that meets their needs and that outlines goals that feel appropriate to their experience and expected outcomes. For example, if a student is focused on connecting their internship to their course learning, I might have an objective like: Understand and apply evidence from the literature as it relates to the internship placement While my colleagues in the SPDC who work with students who are exploring career options might have an objective like: Understand, demonstrate, and articulate growth in at least two of the boundary-crossing competencies and demonstrate how your internship experience and growth in these competencies weave into your larger Elon experience. We all value reflection as a way to grow from experiences, and thus might have an objective like: Articulate the integration of classroom knowledge, skills, natural aptitudes, personal awareness and new learning demonstrated in the internship experience. And then, it is important to align course assignments with the goals, blending formative and summative assignments as well as high and low stakes opportunities, just like in the classroom. For example, I have students who work with me on a crisis line internship in psychology. I ask them to connect their internship to their classroom learning but choosing a topic that has come up in their internship (such as homelessness issues in people with schizophrenia) and to research that in light of what they have learned in the psychology major (such as causes and supports of homelessness in the mentally ill). This type of assignment will be quite specific to your discipline field – mine is just an example! My colleagues in the SPDC encourage students to explore careers through interviews of staff at the site who are in positions that the intern may wish to hold in the future. Conducting a 30-minute interview and then reflecting on what they learned is a great way to get students to directly consider their career development. And then we all engage in reflective assignments in myriad ways. That may include career reflection like just discussed, reflection on how the experience has affected the student personally or asking the student to connect internship happenings to current events. There are some specific formats for internship reflection assignments (see Kiser 2014), but weekly or monthly journals/logs of activities are also great assignments to keep students thinking about the connections between their internship experiences and the rest of their lives. I have found in my work as the Faculty Fellow for Internships that sometimes attention to good pedagogy is less prioritized for internships as mentors do not feel as much ownership of these kinds of experiences as they do in the classroom. But setting clear expectations and helping students to make connections among their learning are as important if not more so as the student goes out into the world to develop personally, academically, and professionally! References Gardner, Phillip & Heather Maietta. 2020. Advancing Talent Development: Steps Towards a T-model Infused Undergraduate Education. Business Expert Press. Kiser, Pamela. 2014. The Human Service Internship: Getting the Most from Your Experience (4th ed.). Boston: Cengage. Moore, Jessie. 2023. Key Practices for Fostering Engaged Learning: A Guide for Faculty and Staff. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing. Wiggins, Grant and Jay McTighe. 2011. Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Units. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). About the Author CJ Eubanks Fleming is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Elon University, where she serves the Associate Director of Undergraduate Research. She previously served as Faculty Fellow for Internships in the College of Arts and Sciences. In this role she evaluated department- and university-level data regarding internship outcomes, shares internship best practices with faculty, and serves as a liaison between faculty/ students and the university’s career center. She also served as a seminar leader for the 2022-2024 research seminar on Work-Integrated Learning. How to Cite this Post Fleming, CJ. 2024. “Lining It All Up: Creating Alignment Between Learning Objectives and Assignments in Internship Coursework.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog), Elon University. July 30, 2024. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/lining-it-all-up-creating-alignment-between-learning-objectives-and-assignments-in-internship-coursework/