Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Masters Theses & Specialist Projects Graduate School 12-2011 Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Internship Program Daniel Jackel Western Kentucky University, Daniel.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.edu/theses Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Community-Based Learning Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Service Learning Commons Recommended Citation Jackel, Daniel, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Internship Program" (2011). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects.edu/theses/1117 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Specialist Projects by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact topscholar@wku.
EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN INTERNSHIP PROGRAM A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Sociology Western Kentucky University Bowling Green Kentucky In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Master of Arts By Daniel Jackel December 2011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank all of my committee members, Dr. Holli Drummond, Dr. Douglas “Clayton” Smith, Dr. Edward Bohlander, and Dr.
Drummond, this project would not have happened if it was not for your continued mentorship and persistent guidance and I am sincerely grateful for all your effort. Smith, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to learn the quantitative techniques that is needed to be a great social scientist. Bohlander, thank you for all of your words of encouragement and your valuable wisdom pertaining to the curriculum and structure of the internship program within our department. Lovell, thank you for your knowledge and expertise that guided the construction of the survey instrument.
Second, I would like to thank my family for the continued support they provided throughout the entire time I worked on this project. Third, I would like to thank my beautiful wife, LaDarra, for supporting and encouraging me during the execution of this research. Lastly, I would like to thank all of the past student interns who gave their generous time to participate in this study. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION.
1 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW. 3 Sociological Component of Experiential Education…………………………. 4 Applied Learning Outcomes and Benefits……………………………………. 6 Effective Design of Program……….
13 Research Model for the Current Study.15 CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODS. 17 Respondent Selection……………………………………………………………17 Research Design…………………. 21 CHAPTER IV ANALYSES. 40 iv CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS.
51 Summation of Project…. 51 Research Limitations and Future Efforts……. 56 Practical Implications and Recommendations. 58 APPENDIX A Internship Program Handout……………………………….
60 APPENDIX B Western Kentucky University Career Services Guidelines….62 APPENDIX C Department of Sociology Required Placement Forms……….65 APPENDIX D Student Service Learning Survey…………………………….72 APPENDIX E Internship Coordinator Cover Letter for Mailed Survey.79 APPENDIX F Internship Coordinator Cover Letter for Emailed Survey….80 APPENDIX G Institutional Review Board Project Approval Letter……….81 APPENDIX H Request for Academic Data from Office of the Registrar…. 83 v LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. Researcher’s Theoretical Model…………. Recap of Researcher’s Theoretical Model.
Data Imputation Method for Regression Analysis………………. 41 vi LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1.1: Component Loadings for Personal Impact.2: Component Loadings for Interpersonal (Social) Impact.3: Component Loadings for Academic (Learning) Impact…………… 25 Table 1.4: Component Loadings for Employment (Job Specific) Impact…….5: Component Loadings for Civic Engagement Impact……………….6: Component Loadings for Civic Awareness Impact………………… 27 Table 1.7: Correlation Matrix Showing Mediating and Enhancement Indices.8: Correlation Matrix Showing Student Demographics and Internship Characteristics………………………………………………………… 35 Table 1.9: Correlation Matrix Showing Student Demographics, Internship Characteristics, Mediating, and Outcome Indices………………….1: Betas and Coefficients of Determination Showing the Effects of Correlated Characteristics and Mediating Effects on Impact Outcomes…………………….………………………………………… 44 vii EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF AN INTERNSHIP PROGRAM Daniel Jackel December 2011 88 Pages Directed by: Holli Drummond, Doug Smith, Edward Bohlander, and Donielle Lovell Department of Sociology Western Kentucky University The traditional way to learn about social sciences in a university setting includes taking courses that teach theoretical frameworks and scientific methodologies that are required for one’s major area of study. The courses that are taught to students are determined by what major they sign up for. After a student has taken all required courses, what skills does the student have to take with him after graduation? Whether participation is pursued solely for academic credit, for career development, or for civic engagement, an experiential experience typically enhances a student’s connection between academic content and “real world” applications.
Bridging the gap between “real world” situations and the classroom demonstrates the need for the application of knowledge. This project’s primary purpose was to examine the student’s internship experience and determine whether it helped to enhance his or her ability to achieve the predicted outcomes of the internship program. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies was deemed appropriate for empirical analysis. This evaluation project measured enhancement outcomes of an internship program, which rationalized potential designs for the undergraduate sociology major/minor and the undergraduate criminology minor, offered by a higher educational institution.
viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Experiential education as we know it today encompasses an array of potential experiences, including service-learning internships, academic service-learning, community service-learning, cooperative education programs, and applied practicum. This chapter provides a formal introduction to the field of experiential education. The conceptual framework for experiential learning dates back to the early periods of Medieval Europe (Hindman, 2009). Early versions of such vocational training used to take the form of apprenticeships that ranged from five to seven years of service.
These apprenticeships were used as a pathway for students of a specific trade to get into a trade guild, which is an association of specialists in a specific field of work. While vocational apprenticeships and “journeyman” programs are still offered in many of the fields in which this style of instruction originated, college students today have the opportunity to participate in an internship or co-op, in conjunction with their chosen collegiate curriculum. In 2009, Spradlin stated that, “In the late 1970s and '80s, more and more college faculty members began to establish internship programs after hearing about them from colleagues at other institutions” (p. Universities took the lead in making internships more appealing to and productive for students by giving course credit for internships, and 1 advisers pushed internships as a way to get ahead in the competition for jobs.
Colleges and major universities then took this idea and tweaked it in such a way that it allowed students to gain college credit while testing out possible careers. Most early university internship programs were established in fields such as business and medicine. Soon, after the surge of new interest in these curricula, most universities established internship programs in other disciplines such as psychology and social work. These early programs served as a way for students to try out possible future careers without the commitment of having to work a full-time job (Spradlin, 2009).
The primary purpose of this study was to examine the student internship experience and determine whether it helped to enhance the ability to achieve the intended learning outcomes of the internship programs in Sociology and Criminology at a regional university located in the southeastern United States (Western Kentucky University) (Appendix A). 2 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter discusses the theoretical designs and models used in experiential education. This chapter also reports the research related to the practical application of internships, the knowledge ascertained through the classroom, the problems and implications of existing internship designs, and the benefits gained from an experiential education. Experiential Education The variations among the terms used to describe outside-the-classroom learning opportunities can be condensed into one phrase: experiential education.
Juliet Miller, from the U. Department of Education, defines an experiential education as “all programs that are designed to expand the setting of learning experiences beyond the traditional school environment to occupational and community settings and these programs use planned experiences…to promote cooperation between traditional educational institutions and business, industry, labor, government and community groups to support learning” (p. Some examples of experiential education include service- learning internship, academic service-learning, community service-learning, cooperative education program, applied practicum, experiential learning, and, most commonly, 3 internship program. All of these examples use experiential components in their curriculum with the only difference being due to logistical and operating issues (Miller, 1982).
Now that the meaning and modes of experiential learning have been discussed, the following section summarizes literature which directly informs the analysis conducted in the current study. Sociological Component of Experiential Education Research indicates that cooperative education curriculum promotes the ability of students to achieve one of the beneficial goals of the sociological curriculum: “to promote students’ abilities to apply the sociological perspective to understand their lives” (American Sociological Association, 1991, Parilla & Hesser, p. Using this sociological perspective allows a student to create what C. Wright Mills (1959) coins a “sociological imagination.” This way of thinking allows a student to comprehend the connection between history and biography, and when students execute this ideological mindset, the integration of a sociological education and career clarification happens (Miller, 1990).
Internships also shed light on various topics relating to sociology such as diversity, the extreme complexities of social organizations, and even participant observation (Parilla & Hesser, 1998). Following the research reviewed above, the current project aims to critically assess areas of enhancement (i., benefits) that an internship is supposed to advance for the student. The areas being measured are components that maximize learning in experiential education (Conference on Undergraduate Internships, 1976). Parilla and Hesser (1998) concluded that “when analyzing the experience, the end result that is wanted is one that intends to build bridges between sociological tradition and research on 4 post –secondary teaching and learning as it relates to the experience-based learning of internships” (p.
Integrating a practical element into higher education enables students to not only acquire knowledge related to their chosen area of study, but also the ability to apply it outside of the classroom (Deuster, 2009). For this application to occur, one first needs to comprehend the connection between learning and personal efficacy. Markus, Howard, and King (1993) found that by combining applied experiences and knowledge from the classroom “student participation in community service can have a significant effect upon their personal values and orientations toward their community” (p. For example, by utilizing one of the elements of an experiential education, reflective observation, one can then reflect on what they learned in the classroom and how that enables them to achieve a higher level of self- efficacy (Kolb, 1984).
This reflection allows a person to recognize their personal weakness and then in turn they can abandon these downfalls so that they can focus on positive personal development. Krug (1991) concluded that only curriculums that endorse more reflection opportunities for their applied placements demonstrate positive civic responsibility. To where as civic responsibility is representative of one’s sense of personal empowerment, interpersonal (social) empowerment is representative of experiential learning through its active learning traits that includes working with other people. This encapsulation of two mechanisms of empowerment promotes the idea that the two are undoubtedly linked.
Munter (2002) states “The individual moves from being a passive consumer of information to becoming an active, aware, responsible citizen, focused not only on his/her own personal development, but also on becoming an agent of change…they are 5 assuming meaningful roles and responding to real issues in ways that have long-lasting impacts on their own lives, as well as the lives of those whom they are serving” (p. This leads to the inquiry of how does empowerment promote positivistic values? Wilson et al. (2001) suggests “changing relationships, roles, and responsibilities are key to practicing conditions of democracy and forming critical judgments about public education. This change is the most difficult and challenging part of reform because it requires a change of hearts as well as minds” (p.
This suggests that empowerment is not easily achieved because a person has to be motivated in order to become self- empowered. Waterman (1997) found that when a person can be self-motivated to promote positivistic values, it is correlated with community service. Inversely, motivators for civic responsibility can be from the community itself.