Exploring online internships amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: Introduction

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Work-based learning, whether in the form of an internship or apprenticeship, is one of the most influential  ideas in public higher education and workforce development policy in the early 21st century. The central  idea behind advocacy for work-based learning is that hands-on experiences in authentic, real-world  contexts are an important complement to academic programs and classroom teaching—an idea expressed  by educational researchers and learning scientists for decades (Dewey, 1997; Resnick, 1987). More  recently, internships have been designated as a “high-impact” practice that improves student engagement  and academic outcomes (Kuh, 2008), leading many colleges and universities to actively promote or even  mandate internship programs as an essential experience. 

College internships have traditionally been in-person opportunities, with students working at a local  organization’s office or even relocating to cities such as Washington DC or Atlanta for the summer. In  recent years there has been considerable growth in the area of online internships, as organizations have  experimented with different types of remote work for college students, capitalizing on developments in  computing technologies and organizational skills in managing remote, team-based projects (Jeske & Axtell,  2016). Besides firms and organizations developing online internships on their own, such as Google and  AT&T, third-party vendors emerged in the 2010s to meet the growing demands for internships by creating  websites that effectively match employers to potential interns.  

Many online internship networking platforms (OINPs)—which provide online resources for college students  seeking online positions, help employers manage their interns’ experiences, build their networks, and  polish their job-seeking skills—helped to usher in this new era of online internships by effectively posing  the prospect of making the in-person internship a thing of the past. Instead, with these new OINPs as  well as company-sponsored online positions, students could find an internship with the click of a button  and perform their work entirely from the comfort of their own home, on their own schedule and with no  relocation, transportation or even wardrobe costs to bear.  

This scenario is no small thing, whether facilitated by a company or a vendor, given the long-standing  concern that internships are inaccessible for low-income and/or geographically isolated students given  scheduling conflicts, lack of transportation, and the inability of many students to work for free (Curiale,  2009; Hora et al., 2019a). With the prospect that remote internships could ameliorate these obstacles to  equitable participation, some even wondered aloud if online internships could singlehandedly improve  equity and diversity in the world of internships (Kraft et al., 2019). 

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the trend towards online internships became a  torrent, with some estimating that 50% of college internships in 2020 were cancelled due to the closure  of many businesses across the country (McGregor, 2020; Nietzl, 2020). Employers and postsecondary  institutions scrambled to find solutions to the massive disruption in the functions of our daily lives,  workplaces, postsecondary institutions, and plans for student internships. While some companies cancelled  internships, many moved to create online experiences where students could participate remotely. For  example, the insurance company Humana has long had an active internship program, hiring college  students in information technology, actuarial, analytics, and finance and accounting positions. The head of  Talent Management at Humana told a reporter that, 

“We are very well experienced at working from home. We’ve done it before. We did it before  COVID-19, and we’re very confident we can provide a meaningful experience. We have a plan that  can be clearly articulated to interns so they are well equipped to understand the tasks and outcomes  they are responsible for at the end of the summer” (Braga, 2020).  

As this observation demonstrates, one of the key developments in higher education during the pandemic  in 2020 was a rapid and massive increase in interest in online internships, whether traditional positions  being converted to online or those offered by third-party vendors. In both cases, online internships were  thrust into the spotlight as a potential answer to the predicament that many colleges, students, and  employers found themselves in as the pandemic worsened—how can we shift an internship to an online,  remote experience while still maintaining the educational and training quality of the experience? Many  vendors rushed into this space with the tools, websites and employer contacts to solve this problem, with  some contracting with colleges and universities to provide access to their websites (and online internship  postings) to their students. In short order, online internships arguably became the central modality of work based learning for students around the world in 2020 (Braga, 2020; Lumpkin, 2020). 

 In response, this widespread move to (and advocacy of) online or remote modalities in 2020 presented a  host of new questions that we felt obligated to pursue: 

• How many students participated in an online internship during the COVID-19 pandemic? • What are the programmatic features of an online internship and how are they similar to and/or  different from a traditional internship?  
• What do students have to say about their experiences taking an online internship? Are they satisfied  with the experience? 
• Are there any patterns across academic majors with respect to which students are taking online  internships? Are STEM students pursuing these opportunities in particular? 
• Are online internships addressing the long-standing equity and access problem with internships? 

These are critical questions because many state governments and institutions of higher education across  the U.S. are continuing to actively develop and/or promote online internship programs, and it is likely that  both remote work and online internships are now a permanent feature of the workplace and experiential  learning landscape.  

Yet, there is little research on online internships, and it is no exaggeration to state that the field of higher  education is engaging in a massive experiment in which students are completing online internships with  limited evidence to support their usefulness for students or their effectiveness in contributing to positive  educational or career outcomes for college graduates. From our perspective as a research Center whose  mission is to centralize student interests and experiences in debates and policymaking around the college workforce transitions, this is concerning. 

In this study, we aim to fill these gaps in the literature by generating new evidence about online  internships amidst the COVID-19 pandemic for both scholarly and practitioner audiences. Sponsored  by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) RAPID program, this mixed-methods multi-site case study  involved collecting and analyzing data for three distinct cases: (1) two independent websites that provide  online internship networking platforms (OINP) for students seeking online internships (n=183 student  survey responses, n=45 student interviews) and employers seeking student interns, (2) 11 four-year  universities (n=9,964 student survey responses), and (3) a single employer-hosted online internship  program at TreeHouse Foods. In addition to providing a more comprehensive account of online internships  during the pandemic, we also provide a brief overview of other studies and accounts of online internships  from 2020 and early 2021 in order to contextualize our findings and provide a comprehensive snapshot  of college student experiences with online internships amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude the  report with recommendations for future research, policymaking, and educational practice surrounding  online internship programs.  

— This is the first of eight articles in this series. Click here to go to the next article. This series of articles is courtesy of the University of Wisconsin (Madison) Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT). To download the full report, go to http://ccwt.wceruw.org/research/technicalreports.html