Towards Academic Internship Relevance: A Closer Look at the Perspectives of Supervisors and Students

Abstract

The paper sought to establish the perspectives of the supervisors and the pre-final students’ feedback after the pre-final students had completed their academic internship to make academic internship relevant. The research was carried out at a University in Botswana. The research utilized the mixed methods approach focusing on pre-final students from the Gaborone campus in the faculty of computing. A sample of 96 students and 36 internship company supervisors were selected. The research findings showed that both the students and internship supervisors felt that the academic internship is very useful but however they are some key issues that should be addressed for the academic internship to be a success. The key issues should be addressed by the three stakeholders namely the student, the internship supervisor and the training institution in order to make the academic internship a success.