Learning Good Employee Skills: Maximizing Internship Program Effectiveness NSEE Annual Conference, September 2016 Abby Trout, Career Center Carol Trosset, Institutional Research and Assessment Carleton College Institutional Research and Assessment 1
Overview Carleton College = a highly selective liberal arts college in Minnesota, with 2000 undergraduates. • Introduce the Carleton College Career Center’s internship process and its focus on learning goals • Review Trosset’s research at Bennington College on which skills are most valued by interns’ employers • Present new research at Carleton on how students become aware of and learn these skills • Discuss implications for Career Center programming Institutional Research and Assessment 2
Career Center mission: Institutional Research and Assessment 3
Carleton Career Center learning goals: • Self-assessment • Career field awareness • Transferable skills • Market selves • Experience • Job search • Graduate degrees • Access to networks • Effective networking Institutional Research and Assessment 4
Career Tracks Institutional Research and Assessment 5
Internships at Carleton • 488 (33%) of rising Carleton sophomores, juniors, and seniors did internships in Summer 2016 • 113 of these internships were funded through the Career Center • Career Center provides funding to cover expenses (i.e., housing, transportation, food) • $386K awarded for Summer 2016 • Internships located all over the world (all over US and 29 countries) and in a variety of industries Institutional Research and Assessment 6
What makes for a rewarding internship? • A strong relationship with a supervisor • Learning • Goals • Self-discovery Institutional Research and Assessment 7
At Carleton, students specify learning goals: Institutional Research and Assessment
Research on Learning Outcomes • What are the actual learning outcomes? • What are the most important/beneficial outcomes, that internships should foster? • How can we assess (a) the degree to which students achieve these outcomes, and (b) the quality of their performance as interns? • Can we identify how beneficial learning took place, so we can design experiences that maximize these effects for other students? Institutional Research and Assessment 9
Bennington College Research: Assessing Internship Performance Liberal arts college in southwest Vermont 700 undergraduates 7-week internship required every winter All students complete 4 internships Research in 2013-14 and 2014-15 Holly McCormack, Dean of Field Work Term Institutional Research and Assessment 10
What are internships for? • Students want to explore possible career paths, and to start building a resume that will lead to jobs after college • Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR’s Marketplace 2012 study “ The Role of Higher Education in Career Development: Employer Perceptions” found that – Employers place more weight on experience, particularly internships and employment during school vs. academic credentials including GPA and college major when evaluating a recent graduate for employment. – Among all industry segments, an internship is the single most important credential for recent college graduates to have on their resume. – 60% of employers practice intern-to-permanent hiring. Institutional Research and Assessment 11
Liberal Arts Learning vs. Job Training • AACU 2013 study “ It Takes More than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success” found that employers endorsed a blended model of liberal and applied learning—practices that involve students in active, effortful work. • Bennington Field Work Term’s goal: Students will apply their academic learning in a broader context outside the classroom. • Same AACU study asked employers whether they want employees to have the skills liberal arts colleges already value, like writing and critical thinking. Employers said “yes.” Institutional Research and Assessment 12
But what do interns need to learn? Supervisors of Bennington students wrote open-ended evaluations, listing interns’ strengths and areas needing improvement. What did they write about without being prompted? • “She was always on time and willing to step in and help with anything.” • “He asked great questions and responded to feedback gracefully.” • “She could pay more attention to her body language during meetings and while working. At times she seemed a bit distracted and disinterested.” • “He tended to drift off task to check Facebook.” Institutional Research and Assessment 13
Categories employers mentioned: • Work ethic • Interpersonal skills • Engagement with work • Independence/initiative • Quality of work • Learns quickly • Organization/efficiency • Confidence • Punctuality • Creativity • Professional conduct • Writing skills • Takes direction • Critical thinking skills • Teamwork • Other job skills Note: Most of these are neither liberal arts skills nor job-specific skills. Instead, they are qualities of any good employee in any job sector. Institutional Research and Assessment 14
Qualities of a good student? (taken from Bennington Faculty narrative evaluations) • Work ethic – “works hard,” “diligent,” “spends time texting during class” • Engagement – “excellent work when focused but not consistently engaged” • Quality – “does high quality work,” “should focus on producing high-quality work the first time around” • Organization – “sometimes unprepared,” “talented but disorganized” • Punctuality – “late to class several times,” “some absences” • Takes direction – “responded to feedback,” “needs to learn to follow directions” • Teamwork – “listens and contributes well in discussion,” “good team member” • Initiative – “challenges himself,” “does the minimum to get by” • Learns quickly – “learns from mistakes,” “learns quickly” • Confidence – “should have more confidence,” “wish would speak up more” Institutional Research and Assessment 15
Evaluating internship performance Unacceptable Needs Good Exceptional Improvement Focused work Too laid-back, easily Mostly works Productive and Works harder than ethic distracted, takes hard, but some conscientious others and is much frequent breaks tendency to lose more productive focus and drift off task Engagement Seems unmotivated, Engagement and Engaged in the Seizes every with the work avoids or resists motivation vary work, willing to opportunity to unwanted tasks with the task help as needed learn as much as possible Organization Inefficient, forgets Still learning how Good time Unusually and Efficiency about assignments, to manage time management, efficient, intuitive may not follow and priorities follows up on sense of priorities through to when working assigned tasks completion alone Takes direction Fails to incorporate Some tendency to Checks in Frequently seeks feedback into work put own agenda regularly, out feedback and products; rarely ahead of others’ responds uses it to improve checks in with needs appropriately to the work supervisor feedback Institutional Research and Assessment 16
Benefits of the rubric: • All employers are asked to comment on a consistent group of skills • Students have a consistent definition of what the College means by workplace readiness • Students can: – compare their self-rating using the same rubric to that of their employers – track their rubric ratings over four years – use employer evaluations as part of a job application packet • Employers have asked us for copies of the rubric to use with their staff Institutional Research and Assessment 17
Challenges for using rubrics with employers: • Colleges need to compare the students in aggregate, and over time. • But students all have different jobs and employers. • The students start at different stages of development. • The employers have different expectations. • We cannot norm the employers to consistent standards. • The evaluation process cannot be blind or unbiased. Institutional Research and Assessment 18
Carleton College Research: Employee Skills Metacognition Focus was on tracking and increasing student awareness of these skills. 90 of the funded interns in Summer 2016 allowed us to use their materials for this research. Materials included: Application essays Blog posts Learning contracts Reflective essays Rachel Leatham, Program Director Institutional Research and Assessment 19
Student Motives and Preparation Motives Preparation Support the mission – 44% Coursework – 52% Interest in activity – 39% Previous “job” – 39% Personal connection – 19% Specific skills – 33% Learn skills – 17% Studying the organization – 17% Explore a career – 13% Off-campus study – 10% Apply academics – 9% Local knowledge – 10% Broaden my horizons – 6% Extracurricular activity – 9% Institutional Research and Assessment 20
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