Students' expectations analysis before and after a curricular internship

Abstract

The present study analyses the expectations of chemical engineering students towards their first professional experience before and after doing a curricular internship. This exploratory research applies to students from the last year of first cycle graduation from Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) and it is based in the results of two similar questionnaires handed to students in two different moments: before starting and after completing the internship. Different items were classified by the students in a scale from 1 (very poor) to 5 (very good). The study considered a group of 44 students and refers to one academic year (2015/16). The results show that the students' expectations before starting the internship are globally very high (medians 4 and 5, for all items). Students' conclusions about real achievements (after ending the internship) are quite close to initial expectations, but for ten of 22 items, statistical differences were observed. In all these cases, the observed differences reflect only a slight decrease in the scores. This exploratory study confirms that the internship allows the students a better awareness of personal, technical and soft skills (self-evaluation) as well as of that first professional experience outcomes. Self-evaluation and real achievements are still very positively classified by the students after the internship, confirming the importance of this experience in their formation.