Grasping learning during internships: The case of engineering education

Workplace learning through internships has since long been seen as a valuable element in the curriculum of engineering education programmes. The present study investigates how job characteristics of the workplace (such as job demands, job control and social support) are related to individual differences in the process of the learning in the workplace during internships and how these contribute to the perceived competences reported by the students themselves. A total of 48 third year engineering students of a university college in germany who all just recently spent an internship of at least 16 weeks participated in this study by completing a questionnaire. The results of the correlational analyses indicate that feedback of supervisors or co-workers seems to be associated with how students regulate and process learning at the workplace. Job control and job demands are positively related to self-perceived competence, but neither of both seem to be correlated with different ways of active regulation and knowledge construction. Explanations and implications are discussed in this chapter.keywordssocial supportstudent learningengineering educationproduct variableknowledge constructionthese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.