Internships are an integral part of the undergraduate collegiate experience. Many programs require one, and students gain valuable skills from this hands-on learning. Students often seek multiple internship opportunities throughout their academic career, yet few are available for those in the first or second year of undergraduate studies. Micro-internships may be a solution., There is no shortage of internships available, especially within communications.  However, the system in which students engage with internships appears outdated.

Internships, especially for students in business, are crucial. Teaching ENL 265 Business Communication, my students begin the class by preparing their resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn pages in hopes of being hired. They build hard skills like understanding specific formats, identifying target audiences, public relations messaging, and building professional identity throughout the course. The course does this through:

• Discussing the genres of resumes and cover letters
• Actively engaging with tone and messaging
• Asking students to analyze course concepts. 

The practical application of these hard skills is clear. Communication is key in business, interacting with employees, clients, and customers. Building on this, identifying your audience improves communication. Each exercise builds on the previous. Still, classroom teaching lacks something vital: soft skill training. A controlled setting with assignments and due dates, the classroom cannot provide the training needed to overcome challenges faced daily in the student’s chosen field. This is where internships come in. 

Jennifer Bay looks at internships as situated learning experiences in “Beyond Situated Learning: Rethinking Internship Theory and Practice in the Distributed Workplace”, chapter one of Effective Teaching of Technical Communication. Internships help students identify their own personal goals and interests and teach students valuable soft skills. Such soft skills include:

• Problem-solving
• External and internal communication skills
• Social justice skills
• Discipline-specific training 

These skills are just as important, if not more important than hard skills. Essentially, internships allow students to put into practice hard skills learned in the classroom while interacting with professionals They learn the daily life of professionals in the field, and better understand the nuances of the working world. As Bay puts it, “…the internship is an opportunity for students to see themselves as “professionals” on the job,” (Bay, 15). This opens their eyes to injustices and communications issues in the workplace, providing students an opportunity to learn to overcome these challenges. These skills can be taught in the classroom, but there are limitations. Often, problem-solving and external and internal communication must be taught through a book, making it difficult to translate these skills to the workplace without practice. Internships provide this practice. Yet two hurdles remain, obtaining the internship and identifying an area of interest. 

Especially within communication, students struggle to find internships as there is no shortage. Since the field is so vast, identifying an area of interest becomes difficult. This holds across majors and disciplines. To use an example from ENL 265 Business Communication, my students are interested in finance, small business entrepreneurship, and marketing, along with many other interests outside the field like graphic design and psychology. Each student would then choose an internship related to their specific focus within their area of interest. This may require multiple tires before finding the right one. However, there are not enough internship opportunities available for those below their third year of undergraduate studies. While understandable, this limits students’ experience and ability to truly find their specific focus. One solution may be to offer more micro-internships exposing students to a variety of disciplines helping them discover their passion 

It can be disheartening to students that so many internships are offered only to college juniors and seniors. There is not enough time to truly invest yourself in finding the internship, and decide if this is the field you want. Micro-internships could help. Shorter timespans with lower stakes, they offer students the chance to try their hand before making a final decision. This is useful, particularly for those who enter their undergraduate careers undeclared. There is no doubt internships are necessary, but the work environments shift. Our thinking on internships should as well. Rather than privileges for those making a definitive decision, we must see them as situated learning experiences providing discipline-specific training not achieved in the classroom. As part of building a professional identity, internships then should be available at any college level. Introducing more micro-internships is one solution for leveling the field.