Internship

Overview

Description

The internship (202200120) is outside the UT organisation, and for gaining experience in working in a company or institution at an academic level. This hosting organisation provides the topic to work on during the internship.

After the internship has been completed, the student is able to:
•       apply academic knowledge and skills in a professional setting
•       adapt to the work situation of the hosting organisation
•       run a scientific project within its time frame
•       communicate to peers and non-specialists. 
•       report about the work in a written form in a clear and concise way 

The Internship is about gaining work experience on an academic level by conducting a small project outside the UT, so at a company or at another university or at a research institute. The hosting organisation is in the lead of drawing up the project topic. An MSc-Thesis project is about contributing to research by working on a scientific problem, applying suitable research and / or design methods: the research group is in the lead of drawing up the project topic. This makes the internship quite different from an MSc-Thesis project: only running a project on a robotics topic is similar.

Many students find an internship position at a company, but also an institution or university is possible. An internship can be done anywhere in the world; in Enschede but also in New Zealand or somewhere in between. “The sky is the limit” unless you manage to find a position with NASA or ESA as an astronaut. The only place on earth definitely out of scope is the UT itself. In all cases, the host institute must provide an assignment that must be approved by the UT supervisor. Approval will only be given if the assignment has sufficient academic level.

CBL-like techniques can be applied, especially when the internship project is formulated as a rather open problem. However, the use of these techniques cannot be enforced as the internship is conducted outside the university. Therefore, there is no need to report on the used CBL techniques in the portfolio.

Entry requirements 

To start your internship, you must have completed at least 45 EC in which the 6 compulsory courses of the chosen specialisation and CBL Year 1 are included. See also EER, Article B3.8.

You must satisfy these requirements at the moment you actually start the internship. It is possible to start the preparation of your internship (well) before you satisfy the requirements. We advise you to start preparations about six months before you plan to start your internship.

You may start the internship at a moment that results of examinations are still pending. However, in case these results appear to be insufficient later, the examination board may order you to interrupt your internship to repair these insufficient results.

The study load of an internship is 20 EC, being 14 weeks of full-time work.  Any day off or public holiday extends the calendar time of this period. This 14 weeks is the minimal duration of an internship. A longer period is allowed but is not part of the internship itself (that is, the study unit of 20 EC being part of the MSc Robotics programme). In this case, the work in the first 14 weeks is considered the internship and must be completed with a report that is assessed. After this, the company and the student may keep a further working relation outside the scope of the internship / UT.

Acquiring internship

It is important to start in time preparing for the internship, as the process of getting everything settled takes a serious amount of wall-clock time. Support concerning organisational issues is given by the internship coordinator of the faculty EEMCS (mail: mobility-eemcs@utwente.nl).

Each academic year, an information session about the internship is held. These are scheduled in the timetable of the MSc programmes. Recordings of it become available for later review, or first view if the actual session was not attended. See also the website on internships  and the accompanying Canvas site on which you can self-enroll when starting the procedure.

To find an internship project, three possibilities are available:

1. Check the internship database of the mobility office with companies offering or have offered internships. On past internships, students have supplied experience reports describing their experiences during the internship.
2. Ask a lecturer / scientific staff member in a research group about their connections to companies for internships: during research, scientific staff often cooperates with companies and institutions that might be willing to provide an internship position.
3. Via own initiative: it is possible and allowed to find an internship position on your own. Many companies offer internship positions on their websites. Finding a position in this way may not be easy but it may lead to a surprising and rewarding internship.

As student, you must find the UT supervisor yourself. This person must be an examiner of the MSc Robotics programme (in general, professors (all levels) working on robotics-related subjects can act as examiner for the internship). 

The UT supervisor must approve the internship proposal before final agreements with the hosting organisation are made. This implies also checking the fit to the specialisation and profile of the student.

As student, you must register the internship in the Mobility Online system.

Running the Internship project

During the internship

While starting, the student must report their start also to the internship coordinator and to the UT supervisor.

During the internship the student is supervised by external supervisor(s) from the hosting organisation (company or institute). The UT supervisor acts as a supervisor “on demand” by the student. 

As student, you follow in principle the way of working / running projects methods as used by the hosting organisation. However, if the hosting organisation has not such a way of working available for internship employees, you could use the approach of doing projects as is done during the MSc-thesis project: splitting project time into three equal parts: exploration, production, finalisation, with a project plan after 1/3, a ‘demo’ after 2/3, and a report (obviously) at the end.

A compulsory progress meeting with the UT supervisor is held after 2/3 of the time, to discuss intermediate results and progress, at the location of the internship. Supervisors from both the UT and hosting organisation, and the student are present. Depending on the place of the internship and travel possibilities, the meeting can be physical or virtual. Only in case time zone differences and lack of travel possibilities prevent a meeting, progress and status is reported by other means. 

The internship student must organise this meeting, and for getting this meeting arranged at the right moment, it is advised to start planning this meeting at 50% of internship time. 

Finalising

The student reports on their work in a final report, and maybe presenting the work at the hosting organisation depending on their way of working.

The student submits the final report to the UT supervisor within 2 months after the internship is finished, and after permission and check by the supervisor(s) of the hosting institution. Note that an internship report is considered work to be graded and is not made public via UT by any means.

Next to the report on the content of the work, as student, you must write and submit an experience report to be stored in the internship database of the mobility office. There is no need to report on activities in the CBL portfolio.

For UT Supervisor

Supervising an internship of MSc Robotics implies

• Check the quality of the assignment description:
  • Check the topic of the internship assigment to ensure the required academic level of the internship.
  • Check whether the topic has a match with the specialisation and profile the student has chosen.
  • Check whether the proposed project is realistic and can be done within the time budget, or provisions are taken to adapt project goals to let it fit.
  • Check whether proposed supervision grants proper guidance of the intern.
• This approval must be done before the student starts their internship. 
  Signing the proposal that the student uploads in Mobility Online is the action to express this approval administratively.  
• Act as a supervisor “on demand” by the student. This implies that day-to-day supervision is left to the supervisors of the hosting organisation. Only in case this way of working causes issues, the student can ask for assistance from the UT supervisor.
• Visit the internship student at the location of the internship to discuss intermediate results and progress. The supervisor(s) of the hosting organisation, and the student are present. Depending on the place of the internship and travel possibilities, the meeting can be physical or virtual. Only in case time zone differences and lack of travel possibilities prevent a meeting, progress and status is reported by other means.
• Assess the final report. The final grade of the internship is defined by the UT supervisor and is based on the evaluation by the supervisor(s) of the hosting organisation, the observations of the UT supervisor during the internship and the report. An assessment form is used by the UT supervisor to underpin the grading. The external supervisor provides their opinion about the performed internship through the external-supervisor assessment form and discusses this with the UT supervisor. 

For Companies / company supervisor

See the pages on the Internship EEMCS website for hosting institutions.