A Development of Automatic Self-Ordering Following Module for Online Campus Tour Project of 5 Countries

Recently, Covid-19 pandemic has introduced some disturbances in the transportation industry. As a result, some university students are now participating in online internship programs. In our laboratory, we proposed an online campus tour project where each foreign student teleoperates with a robot. The robot prepared is outfitted with a camera, laser range finder sensor, and a mobile monitor to represent the student's physical appearance. The robots and foreign students are connected through the university's internal network. During the tour, we found some flaws and improvements in the current system. Because of the time delay and other difficulties, some students are not able to follow the campus tour project at the same pace as the others. Consequently, a distributed module for automated following features with dynamic order is proposed. The following order is determined by the location of each robot. The proposed module combines ROS Navigation Stack and a novel method of robot formation. In this study, the proposed improvement is evaluated and discussed. © 2022 ICROS.

Recreating the Experience of an In-Person Summer Internship Program Remotely

We describe strategies, designs, tools, and technologies that were part of a 9-week experimental virtual summer internship program conducted during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The goals for the program were to (1) recreate the in-person summer internship experience, (2) explore ways of getting people to help each other, and (3) develop a sense of community in a remote/virtual setting. We offer learnings gleaned by the team regarding building virtual communities that encourage collaboration and communication.

Student reflections on an internship in educational leadership: A mixed methods case study

Researchers and legislators are seeking ways to improve educational leadership programs to better prepare individuals to lead today's schools. Researchers have often focused these efforts on an objectivist research paradigm, examining program outcomes and perspectives of current leaders. As such, few studies have engaged students in conversations about their internship experience. The purpose of the present study is to examine graduate students' perceptions of their internship experience and preparation in the field upon completing a year-long internship grounded in Experiential Learning Theory and the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders. The study additionally examined whether gender differences existed in these perceptions. It is the theory of the current study that the use of this subjective research is a critical step in strengthening educational leadership programs. The overarching research question that guided this study was, Do graduate students believe their internships provided them with the experiences necessary to be future educational leaders? The researcher posed the following research questions to further guide this study: (a) To what extent do graduate student interns believe their internships provided them with the experiential learning necessary to be educational leaders? (b) To what extent do graduate student interns feel prepared to carry out leadership skills related to the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders upon completing their internship? (c) What experiences do graduate student interns identify as the most and least beneficial in the internship? (d) Do students' perceptions of their internships and feelings of preparation differ by gender? Data were collected and research questions were analyzed using surveys and individual interviews at a single university. Four results emerged across quantitative and qualitative results: (a) students believed their internships provided them with the experiential learning necessary to be educational leaders, (b) students expressed confidence in their leadership performances, while also discussing a desire for additional practice due to the COVID pandemic, (c) students placed a high value on relationships and experiential learning, while also identifying the COVID pandemic as the least beneficial experience, (d) gender differences persist in the field of educational leadership. Results of this study support prior literature on educational leadership, while offering new data on students' views of their internship experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Individual and Social Factors Influencing Sports Science Internship Students' Practice-Based Learning: A Phenomenological Study

The results of this study will help form guidelines for developing students' capacities for learning in authentic workplace settings to better prepare them to be effective and efficient in their chosen careers. This phenomenological study examined factors influencing practice-based learning and how participants learned from their practice. Six fourth-year students majoring in sports science who had recently returned from their internships took part in this study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was performed on the transcripts to characterize the participants' shared experiences, which yielded the following seven themes of factors influencing their practice-based learning: (a) clear career goals and identification of an appropriate internship facility;(b) self-efficacy;(c) reflective practice;(d) good workplace relationships;(e) organizational leaders as agents transferring knowledge;(f ) knowledge-sharing behavior;and (g) impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Internship students also learned to identify their weaknesses in this study, communication skills, group fitness instructor skills, and a professional exercise instructor image.

Open-Source Internships With Industry Mentors

Internships help students connect what they have learned in the classroom to the real world, and students with access to internships are more likely to graduate and secure employment. However, many students are unable to find an internship by the time they graduate. This experience report describes a program where volunteer software engineers mentor students as they work on open-source projects in the summer, offered as an alternative to a traditional internship experience. We catalog the considerations involved in providing an experience similar to a traditional internship, describe our program's design, and provide two years' worth of participant evaluations and career outcomes as a measure of efficacy. The program served mostly undergraduates from non-R1 schools who are underrepresented in technology, and achieved similar educational outcomes to a traditional internship program. Most promisingly, mentors were willing to serve as a professional reference for 80% of students and the number of graduating seniors who secured full-time employment in technology was 7 points higher than average (despite occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic). © 2022 ACM.

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. © 2021 IEEE.

A Virtual Internship Experience

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted life on campuses and around the world. During April 2020, the Student Engineers' Council (SEC) at Texas A&M University recognized that many students in the College of Engineering were notified their summer internships with companies had been cancelled. It was devastating to students who wondered how they were going to replace the professional development experience outside of the classroom. Reacting to this emergency, within three weeks, the President of SEC and Professors of the Practice from the engineering entrepreneurship program developed a summer instruction program which focused on professional skill development through a virtual implementation. All faculty involved had implemented internship programs in their companies and were convinced that a program could be offered, not to completely replace an internship at a company, but to build the professional skills students would need in their jobs. Ultimately, the virtual internship program involved over 350 students, almost 60 mentors, and seven faculty. It was divided into two 6-week phases - 1) professional skill training and 2) teamwork project implementation. Surveys were conducted pre- and post-training to assess the effectiveness of individual skill development and determine what elements of the program should be continued. A final survey was conducted of students and mentors to assess the effectiveness of teamwork development. Participants reported increases in development of individual skill areas over the course of the program. When rating their team performance, participants ratings were between somewhat agree and agree on the majority of the aspects of team performance assessed. Overall, participants had a positive view of their experience in the program. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

Adapting to the Changing Needs of Family and Consumer Sciences Students: Instructor Perspectives during the Pandemic

In March 2020, the pandemic brought significant changes to higher education modalities. This paper examines how family and consumer sciences (FCS) instructors in a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary department at a large 4-year university modified instruction and related activities as a response to the pandemic. Using the Family and Consumer Sciences Body of Knowledge as a framework, we illustrate approaches to meet students' basic needs and support their individual well-being during the crisis, and we provide a detailed description of changes in instructional strategies across different disciplines within the department. We highlight the lessons learned by instructors during the transition to fully online instruction and provide suggestions for other FCS programs moving forward.