Zoom or Gloom: The Challenges of a Virtual Internship Experience

Abstract

The rise of the Covid-19 pandemic changed many facets of life for college students. College students were sent home in the middle of a semester, forced to quickly figure out how to learn virtually and take classes online that had been in-person. This change also resulted in a proliferation of virtual internships. The existing scholarship on virtual internships is sparse, leaving many questions, specifically, what makes a virtual internship “successful?” We examine this question by analyzing feedback of interns collected via a novel survey of students completing a virtual internship during Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021. We explore the effect of remote interning on a student’s overall satisfaction with the internship experience, duties performed, technical difficulties faced while interning virtually, as well as specific factors that may improve the virtual internship experience for students. Results suggest that virtual internships can be highly successful component of student learning. We close by providing recommendations for internship coordinators interested in supporting virtual internship experiences.

Keywords:

• Covid-19
• internships
• online learning
• virtual internships

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This study was approved by The George Washington University Institutional Review Board #NCR213647.

2 It’s unclear why the response rate for the Spring 2020 survey is much higher. Although we have no certainty about either of these explanations, we suspect this may be the result of one of two factors: (1) students’ internship experiences were more salient as a result of the move online so they were more motivated to complete the Spring 2020 wave. (2) The other possibility is that when the Spring 2020 wave was in the field most students were still at home, sheltering in place with reduced distractions, and thus were more likely to complete the survey.

3 For the most part there are no statistically significant differences in the duties interns reported engaging in between paid and unpaid interns nor between male and female interns. The two exceptions are male interns were twice as likely to report attending hearings and were more likely to report writing as one of their duties. The first difference is likely accounted for by 19% of male interns reported interning for Congress or a member of Congress’ office, whereas only ∼10% of female interns reported doing so.

4 Fundraising and campaign work also saw large increases from before the start of the pandemic and after, but that is more likely the result of the 2020 election cycle than anything related to the pandemic or whether the internship was in-person or virtual.

5 A reported gamma of the association between a dichotomous variable capturing if the student listed poor communication as a problem and their reported frequency of communication is .19.

6 In a crosstab comparison of supervisor satisfaction and level of communication, the majority of student who reported highest satisfaction also reported the most frequent communication (more than once a week) and compose 36% of all respondents.

7 The correlation between the satisfied and accomplished measure is 0.782. The correlation between appreciated and satisfied measure is 0748. The correlation between accomplished and appreciated measure is 0.814.

8 A correlation between satisfaction and communication frequency is .30.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clinton M. Jenkins

Clinton M. Jenkins is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Birmingham-Southern College. He studies political behavior and political communication. His current research focuses on political socialization and the political development of adolescents. In addition, he is engaged in scholarship on teaching and learning in political science. He is a frequent participant at APSA’s Teaching and Learning conferences, where he has presented multiple papers on internships and teaching writing to political science majors. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from The George Washington University in American Politics and Quantitative Methodology. In addition, he holds a B.A. in Political Science from York College of Pennsylvania.

Shannon McQueen

Shannon McQueen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at West Chester University. Her research focuses on the importance and influence of women’s involvement in politics, the mobilization of women’s groups, and the institutional, cultural, and policy obstacles women face when running for office. Additionally, she is engaged in scholarship concerning internships, civic engagement, and metacognition in the classroom. She previously received an M.A. and Ph.D in American Politics and Public Policy from George Washington University and holds a B.A. in Political Science and English from Saint Michael’s College.

Susan L. Wiley

Susan L. Wiley is an Associate Professor of Political Science at The George Washington University. Along with her teaching duties in Political Science she serves as the department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies, leads the undergraduate internship program, and teaches quantitative methods in the Graduate School of Political Management. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Political Behavior and Public Policy, and holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from The Georgia Institute of Technology.