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The current economic downturn has created an increasingly competitive global jobs market which demands graduates with enhanced transferable skills as outlined in the World Economic Forum’s . Higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK are therefore focusing more on building employability skills and career preparedness within their graduates. Students also demand demonstrable value to their degree awards demonstrated though employability skills. This is of commuting time and costs, financial impact through loss of part-time income and caring responsibilities.

For the international student, have increased barriers and limitations on gaining work experience alongside their studies. Local students coming from marginalised communities are also further constrained and disadvantaged by traditional physical placements being out of their reach, . HEIs require a solution as they risk reputational damage through compromising on the employability credentials of their degree programmes. There is also an underlying issue of upholding equity, diversity and inclusivity. Therefore, the question is how are HEIs going to embed employability more equitably and effectively (Daubney, 2022)?

This is where virtual internships (VIs) can come in to provide a solution. We at Edinburgh Napier University have introduced VIs to more than 1,000 students since the Covid-19 pandemic. The inclusion of VIs in the curriculum resulted from continued discussion and feedback received from students on the development of employability skills. At the end of VIs every student submitted a reflexive commentary which indicated that VI are playing a transformative role in skills development and career-readiness across programmes and disciplines.

‘Virtual internships are playing a transformative role in skills development and career-readiness across programmes and disciplines.’

The VI does not carry any of the barriers of the traditional internship. Traditional internships may  due to factors such as social mobility. Recent technological transformations have made VI broadly available and widely accessible to now be considered as a. However, if included as a mere add-on without methodically designing them into the curriculum, they fail to function to their full potential. When ‘designed-in’ with a systematic pedagogical intent, virtual placements can extend beyond simple technologically based substitutes for a physical experience. We used an employability skills module as the vehicle for introducing a VI which served as an ‘apprenticeship’ for sourcing physical placements. This is then subsequently enhanced with students writing a reflective commentary on their experiences and relating it to course content. Virtual internships now have the potential to become structured, reflexive learning experiences, which further embed digital literacies and let students directly apply academic content and discipline-specific professional practices.

In our experience, when VIs are underpinned with an element of assessment and reflexivity then they enhance the student-experience and student-engagement with the curriculum. Our students were able to articulate their enhanced employability skills and experience. They acknowledged that task variety challenged them and took them ‘out of their comfort zones’, which developed their skill sets. One student in reflecting on her experience of being assigned a task of drafting a formal letter stated that she learned how to draft communications for different audiences, which is not normally covered in academic writing. While another student showed that virtual internship helped build her confidence and reduce the anxiety that is caused by physical presence at the office. The embedded employability through VIs also helped us improve widening participation and student engagement.

Virtual internships now represent an opportunity to extend pedagogy and embed employability into curricula. Further, they have the additional benefit of allowing equity of opportunity for previously underserved/underrepresented students.

Figure 1: Key takeaways

Reference

Daubney, K. (2022) ‘Teaching employability is not my job!’: Redefining embedded employability from within the higher education curriculum. Higher Education, Skills and Work-based Learning, 12(1), 92–106.