Application of Consumptive Metrics to Measure Internship Alignment

Internships aim at transitioning students from the academic environment (academic learning at the university) to a professional work environment (industry practice). Our paper aims to objectively evaluate the alignment of learning with practice based on the internship program conducted in Term 1, 2020 (pre-Covid), for our undergraduate students at the College of Technology Innovation studying in the bachelor’s program for Computer Science and Information Systems. In order to measure the alignment, from a theoretical perspective, we adopted the framework of Kirkpatrick, which provides a set of consumptive metrics for evaluating the learning resources consumed in education and training, using the constructs ‘reaction’ (how the learners feel, including their personal reactions to the internship training) and ‘learning’ (measuring the knowledge, skills, or attitudes acquired as a direct result of the training, including mapping to their courses). Using 36 internship student reports collected over a single semester (in which students spent 8 weeks onsite at various organizations in the United Arab Emirates) as a sample for this study, we measured internship results in terms of the learning resources consumed during the internship experience using consumptive metrics to observe its alignment with practice. The results of the study allow academics to reinforce strong areas and improve areas of concern to better align learning with practice

Evaluating Onsite and Online Internship Mode Using Consumptive Metrics

The paper aims to assess the effectiveness between onsite and online internship mode by measuring the critical components of learning through the Kirkpatrick\u27s ‘consumptive metrics\u27 model. The primary goal of internship is to assist university students in their progression from the academic to a professional work environment. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted this process where it temporarily moved to online mode. Hence, the authors use Kirkpatrick\u27s ‘consumptive metrics\u27 (CM) for evaluating the learning resources consumed using two constructs namely ‘reaction\u27 and ‘learning\u27. Using 21 onsite and 20 online intern reports, researchers objectively measured the difference in alignment of theory with practice between onsite and online mode. The research revealed that while the CM components namely ‘course satisfaction\u27 and ‘training relevance\u27 on the interns are similar for both modes, there is a considerable reduction in the effectiveness of internship in terms of the CM components namely the ‘training environment\u27, ‘knowledge gained\u27, and ‘career advancement\u27 in an online mode