Technology Internships Prove Flexible, Resilient, and Critical during COVID: One Community College's Pivot to Opportunity during the Pandemic. Executive Summary

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Community Colleges; Internship Programs; COVID-19; Pandemics; Barriers; Program Effectiveness; Two Year College Students; Employers; Job Skills; Technology Education; Experiential Learning; Educational Technology; Technology Uses in Education; Employer Attitudes; Student Attitudes; Computer Science; Supervision; Student Evaluation; Employment Qualifications; Biomedicine

This research explores how COVID has impacted technology internships, including student and employer participation, satisfaction, and challenges; changes in the structure of internships; and impact on student employment outcomes. The roots of this study emerged in summer of 2021, as the authors were completing a three-year study funded by the National Science Foundation to examine how community colleges can create effective technology internships as a bridge to employment for community college technology graduates. The COVID pandemic began in the United States just as the initial study was drawing to a close, and the effect of COVID on internships was just starting to emerge. Recent national surveys have documented significant changes in student access to internships and changes in internship structure as a result of the pandemic. Questions remained regarding how the pandemic has altered technology students' access to internships, the structure of internships, and whether the benefits of internships for technology employment and for broadening participation in technology careers have been sustained during the pandemic. This study specifically addresses four broad research questions: (1) How has COVID affected student and employer internship plans and opportunities?; (2) What have been the challenges and opportunities in translating internships to a virtual environment?; (3) How did internships mediate graduates' transitions to employment during COVID?; and (4) How has COVID affected the potential for internships to broaden participation in technology careers? [For the full report, see ED623387.]

ERIC

2022

ED623386