Till Örebro universitet

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the instant digital transformation of regular, campus-based courses in higher education. Although this was an energy-consuming challenge, it was a familiar process to many universities. However, courses often include elements of skills training and internships. In many cases, these elements had to be re-planned or replaced. In other cases, it was possible to transform them to enable students to have internships by participating in workplace settings remotely. Consequently, universities have to evaluate and develop knowledge on student learning in this new setting. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate student perception of the development of generic skills during internships. This qualitative study has focused on comparing the views of two student groups: one group that did their internships digitally and one group that did the same course, but on site at a physical workplace. The data collected and analysed comprised self-evaluations from 61 Swedish university students on a course in information systems development. The material was processed using directive content analysis guided by a predefined set of IS graduate core competencies from theory. The results from the study indicate that students who did an online internship perceived their development of problem-solving skills as being both deeper and broader when compared to the other group. Although there were more similarities in terms of learning, it was possible to distinguish different ways of learning due to the different circumstances. However, the most obvious difference in the analysed material relates to skills in tolerating change. Students who did their internships on site tended to perceive changing conditions as problems and obstacles, while students in the other group expressed the same aspects as learning opportunities.