Internships and thesis placements are crucial parts of the Master School programmes that further strengthen the Knowledge Triangle integration. We are dependent on a steady flow from partners and potential partners of two kinds of opportunities for master students: firstly, one-month internships, and secondly, master thesis topics including a two-month placement. This is known to be challenging both regarding reaching enough opportunities as well as securing they right types of opportunities.
Organizations offering, or potentially offering internships and thesis placements need to see enough value offering them, and the effort required to offer and manage these need to be quite limited. With a higher perceived value we should be able to get both better and more internships and thesis placements to offer. This will then both benefit the organizations offering the internships and thesis placements as well as the attractiveness of the Master programmes.
Do you agree with the statements above? How significant is this issue and what is the reason for that online is not meeting the needs?
We should here focus on trying to understand the nature of the problem, so please try to avoid to discussing concrete solutions, even if it is difficult. Potential solutions will be discussed in the next step of the process.
EIT Urban Mobility Academy Calls 
We should think what is internship from the eyes of the students? Is it about salary? Is it about getting an email from an organization? Or a desk to sit? I do not think so, especially in such a short time.
I think it is about having frequent contact with professionals in the field, and time for mutual learning with them on actual problems. And this goes back to the relationship building between academia and companies. Which also means mentoring from the side of academia, not just mentoring from the side of companies. And to expectations and cultural norms we might have in our working culture.
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Key to the needs here is the form and duration of placement. One- and two-month placements are actually rather short for many organisations. A month might hardly enough to set a student into the work environment and kind of challenges from the organisation’s perspective. We need to know more about organisations’ expectations here.
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I agree that one or two month placement is probably too short for students to actually complete something useful. Instead of a full-time internship for very short time, how about a part-time internship for a longer period? In universities, students can work as a part-time research assistant (e.g. 1 or 2 days a week) for 6 to 12 months. Can they do the same things in companies? Of course, I don’t know if companies would prefer this option. Students can also try to combine internship with master thesis project, so they would have more time to work there.
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If the intership is for something very specific and the trainee is fully-qualified to do it, may be it make sense to be a month.
For the company to get value and to make an intership meaningfullfor the trainee, minmum 4 months are need. Coompany has to invest time in welcoming+orienting guiding and training +follow up
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Good comments stated above, but these can and should be addressed in the work 2021. I don’t see a specific need to address this topic in the 2022 call.
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