How And Why To Offer Virtual Internships

This resource first appeared in issue #67 on 26 Mar 2021 and has tags Managing A Team: Interns

Ten simple rules for running and managing virtual internships - Johannes Werner, Debora Jeske, PLOS CompBio
REU Participation Encourages Students to Pursue Graduate Degrees - Burçin Tamer, Computing Research Association

Working effectively with short-term trainees is tough; it takes a lot of additional planning, clarity, and careful communications. Working with virtual staff is tough; it also requires a lot more intentionality around planning, clarity, communications. And so virtual short-term trainees requires all that and more.

The good news is that if you have an ongoing programme of hiring such trainees, especially if the team is big to work with more than one at a time, you can amortize that work over several students - and it will make your team better at working with virtual collaborators, trainees, and onboarding permanent staff.

Werner & Jeske’s article is a good read - some key points from my point of view:

Clarify project and supervision characteristics - careful planning about what you want to get out of the program and how you’ll get it is needed for success.
Identify and monitor progress on learning goals - you can’t tell if what you’re doing is working for the students if you don’t do this!
Keep track of and celebrate learning moments from start to finish - it helps you document what’s working, and make things easier for following students.
Connect students with one another and across projects - give the students not only peers to talk with, but broader exposure to other projects.
Evaluate and improve your projects and supervision over time - this is absolutely key! If you’re actually tracking what’s working and what doesn’t seem to be, you can make the experience better for you and the trainee over time.

There are a number of good reasons why you’d want to work with interns; it’s cost-effective if you have that kind of projects, and it can be an effective recruiting tool (you can invite interns back as permanent hire if it works out).

But Tamer points out another reason, supported by data - well executed research experiences for undergraduates (REUs) can significantly increase the number of students who go on to higher degrees and seriously consider research as a career. Having REU programs, especially those that bring on women, Black and Indigenous students, or students from other groups that are systematically underrepresented in research computing, can help grow our field.