One-Year Internship Program on Software Engineering: Students' Perceptions and Educators' Lessons Learned

2026-03-23

AI Summary

This study addresses the misalignment between software engineering curricula and industry demands, as well as the challenges students face during internships. Drawing on qualitative thematic analysis of 91 internship reports from 2023–2024, the research identifies three core difficulties encountered by students over a year-long internship and evaluates the course content most supportive of their practical experiences. Integrating a decade of iterative improvements in internship-based coursework, the project distills reusable pedagogical strategies and proposes an evidence-based framework for effective university–industry collaboration to support interns. The findings culminate in a practical guide tailored for educators and industry partners, demonstrably enhancing students’ industry readiness and internship outcomes.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Software Engineering
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Web
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Solvers and Tools

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Bridging structured and unstructured data
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

The inclusion of internship courses in Software Engineering (SE) programs is essential for closing knowledge gaps and improving graduates' readiness for the software industry. Our study focuses on year-long internships at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia), which offers in-depth industry engagement. We analysed how the course evolved over the last 10 years to incorporate students' needs and summarised the lessons learned that can be helpful for other educators supporting internship courses. Our qualitative analysis of internship data based on 91 reports during 2023-2024 identified three challenge themes the students faced, and which courses were found by students to be particularly beneficial during their internships. On this basis, we proposed recommendations for educators and companies to help interns overcome challenges and maximise their learning experience.

Problem

• internship
• Software Engineering
• student challenges
• industry engagement
• experiential learning

Innovation

• internship program
• software engineering education
• qualitative analysis
• industry engagement
• curriculum evolution