Optimal virtual internship model for vocational studies

Abstract

Key performance analysis in higher vocational studies in the last few years revealed significant difficulties for the conducting of traditional, on-site internships in the field of information technologies. The main on-site internship obstacles are geographical, social, financial or physical disabilities, or lack of experience of many world-of-work educators. In many cases, such internships are not able to fulfill their main goal, to make a painless student’s transition from education to employment. The current COVID19 pandemic crisis made this fact more obvious. Therefore, there is a need to reevaluate the traditional internship performance in a time of globalization of the professional world. This paper analyses information gathered from a large data collection, past and present internship experiences, in order to design a virtual internship model for higher vocational studies of information technology.