Abstract
Internships are important for secondary students so they may develop academic, social, and decision-making skills that will be applicable in the real world. Secondary students acquire internships in the summer with organizations or universities, but the learning outcomes are unclear. This qualitative study determined if secondary student interns develop academic and social growth through a two-week summer engineering internship. This internship required secondary students to work as classroom assistants with teachers learning engineering curricula to teach to K-12 students. The secondary students assisted in the classroom with CAD drawing, programming and constructing robotics and animatronics. The objective of the student intern program was to give these interns an authentic experience on a college campus with the necessary tools and skills, so that these students will choose to attend university and major in an engineering field. Within the internship, daily one-hour workshops took place with a focus on developing soft skills. The workshops ranged from intern roles, professional communication, interview process and skills, how to write a resume, how to apply for college, financial aid and scholarships, and college experience. The results from this study show students do develop soft skills, such as communication and public speaking, new knowledge gained, and confidence through the internship learning environment.
Highlights
Project Lead The Way (PLTW) is a non-profit organization that partners with public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, organizations in the private sector, and higher education institutions to increase the number and quality of Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM)-ready students graduating from the educational system
The purpose of this study was to determine if soft skill workshops help secondary students develop their academic and social growth in a summer internship environment
The data collected from this study addressed the following research question: Do soft skill workshops help secondary students develop their academic and social growth in a two-week summer internship environment?
Summary
Project Lead The Way (PLTW) is a non-profit organization that partners with public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, organizations in the private sector, and higher education institutions to increase the number and quality of Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM)-ready students graduating from the educational system. In 2018, 14,072 elementary, middle, and high schools were implementing the PLTW curricula [1]. In the state of California, there are over 1,000 schools that are using PLTW curricula. In southern California, over 50,000 K-12 students are taking PLTW courses each year. This results in 39% of engineering first time freshman at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) that are from PLTW schools. During the summer at Cal Poly Pomona, the College of Engineering hosts PLTW summer core training,
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