Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

Internships are increasingly being incorporated in college programs as an important component to enhance student learning and employability of graduates. Many marketing internships appear to be administrative support or sales force positions requiring mainly soft-skills, and in which students have limited on-the-spot training and prospects of professional development. Given low requirements, it is hard for sponsoring firms to assign or assess interns’ potential to deliver in real or more challenging tasks. Unsurprisingly, implementation of marketing internships varies: most programs are mainly supervised either by employers on site, a faculty coordinator, or a university internship office, with relevant learning outcomes difficult to evaluate. To address the concerns, we conducted a three- phase pilot program that started in a marketing course. Phase I: Instructor finds an industry partner and defines its marketing problems; guides students to work on the problems and provide suggestions to the partner. Phase II: At partner’s site, students implement suggestions developed in phase I and continue to work on the problems; partner and faculty provide feedback. Phase III: Students work on similar problems for different industry partners based on experience in Phase I and II; they may also continue into full-time employment. Data was collected following case-study principles (Yin, 2003). Preliminary results suggest that faculty preparation of learning objectives and tasks, focus on relevant marketing function to be applied, clarity of intern and employer obligations, and active supervision in all three phases created a successful internship for all stakeholders: student-interns, employer sponsor, and customers of the business.