Although the differences between the two groups of students, examined in the previous paragraphs, emerge sometimes no distinctly, nevertheless it appears quite clearly that non- traditional students face and live the internship experience more serenely and more optimistically. This seems to impact positively the relationships established on the workplace, the developed competence and the sensation of being in an unbroken and consistent path between the university and the labour market (with a feeble reflection also in the placement: 29.2% of them, vs 22.6% of regular students, receive a post-internship job proposal).
Of course, the aforesaid landscape affects the level of gratification, e.g. only 4.2% of non-traditional students (vs 12.9% of regular ones) would not recommend the internship experience to other classmate at university; besides the diagram in fig. 32 reinforces the opinion that they are generally more satisfied with the internship. In the co-occurrence network diagrams in fig. 33, used to analyze the explanation of overall satisfaction, the
1 1.6% 5 7.9% 17 27.0% 40 63.5% 2 4.2% 10 20.8% 36 75.0% Overall satisfaction about the internship experience
Outer circle: regular students Inner circle: non-traditional students
None Low Moderate High
Fig. 32 Regular students Non-traditional students 4 20.0% 3 21.4% 4 20.0% 2 14.3% 6 30.0% 2 14.3% 1 5.0% 1 7.1% 5 25.0% 6 42.9%
If you encountered difficulties during the internship, can you indicate any possible solutions?
Improve communication and sharing goals between university and companies Implement better guidance actions to chose the internship
Improve tutors' involvement, support and preparation Improve the ability to relate and / or work with particular types of users Increase hours of internship and /or reduce number of examinations
103 key role of the tutor emerges once again, as well as the complexity of the factors at play that we tried to bring to light in this paper.
Paradoxically, non-traditional, which would be expected to be a problematic students’ category, provides interesting insights (to be further explored through case studies, in- depth interviews, etc.) to improve the experience of regular ones. Actually, next qualitative and quantitative investigations could clarify whether the more positive orientation of non-traditional students is due to differences in expectations or propensity to criticism, or to a different maturity, with its background of learning and training paths
Fig.33: Network diagram of top 60 co-occurrences of morphemes with f ≥ 5 (with exclusion of esperient,
tirocin, soddisfacent) in the non-traditional students’ explanation of overall assessment of the internship,
104 and/or possible previous work experiences. At the moment, on the basis of the collected material, we can resume as follow the main proposals to improve still further the internship experience, in particular for non-traditional students:
1. Improving the consistency between the Master Degree and the real work environment, providing more in-context knowledge and teaching strategies (e.g. case histories, simulations, laboratory, task based activities) able to reduce the noticed gap theory-practice, especially with regard to diagnostic tools (interview techniques, administration of test) and clinical techniques (for mental disability, autism, learning difficulties), but also to communication/rapport with particular groups of users (gambling and drug addicted persons, social deprived persons).
2. Furnishing more and better vocational guidance for a more conscious choice of both the sector and the specific organization where to carry out the internship and involving more the students in sharing the goals and the methods of activity so to promote responsibility and engagement.
3. Deepening the connections between the University and the institutions in agreement, paying special attention to the relationship and, possibly, the training of the persons that will assume the role of tutors and maintaining a constant communication with both organizations and students, controlling that the activities effectively carried out are the same of the project or, in any case, consistent with the role of the trainees.
4. Promoting career services to support students in their search for employment after the internship, also exploiting the developed assets and contacts.
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