Learning Plan Guidelines for 2008 Summer Internships
An internship is an active learning experience in which you thoughtfully engage in the work of an organization and learn through ongoing processing and reflection about the experience and its relevance. To get the most out of your internship, it is important to be intentional and strategic in defining what you hope to gain from the experience.
The Learning Plan is a tool to help you identify, articulate, prioritize, and gather support for what you want to learn and accomplish during your summer internship. Your plan is not meant to be a binding commitment, but rather a living, working document you can use with your supervisor to tailor your work and to assess your progress and contribution.
Understanding the Learning Plan Components
These are three main components that go into developing your Learning Plan. Examples are provided in the Learning Plan document, which you can download and use as a template for creating your own plan.
- Learning Objectives
Learning objectives answer the question What do I want to learn through this internship? Learning objectives are key to planning and directing your learning. Your objectives should fall into three main categories:
- Gathering Information: What do you know about the organization? The project you will be working on? What do you hope to learn about a particular public policy/issue, focus of work, community, specific body of knowledge?
- Developing Skills: What contributions do you hope to make to the work of the organization? What added skills do you hope to acquire or strengthen through practical hands-on experience, training, and/or observation?
- Contributing to the Common Good: What do you hope to understand and learn about yourself as an active, engaged citizen and your impact on this community and public problem?
- Strategies and Tools to Accomplish Objectives
This component of your plan answers the question How am I going to learn it? What on-the-job and off-the-job training, experiences, projects, and/or activities directly support my learning objectives? - Assessment Indicators
This component of your Plan answers the question How will I demonstrate the progress I made toward achieving each of my objectives? How will I measure my success? How will my contributions be measured and evaluated?
Developing Your Learning Plan
The following guidelines will help you to prepare, plan, and implement a useful and realistic Learning Plan.
- Make a contract with yourself and consider this a baseline plan for your learning. Begin with the perspective that you are identifying the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values you wish to develop for yourself. This is your plan, and it is an outline to help you in reaching your goals and realizing when you have reached them.
- Think about what is relevant to you. Consider the present and project the future. What will get you from where you are to where you want to be? What do you most want to explore, understand or learn during your internship? What changes would you like to see in yourself by the end of this internship?
- Consider the possibilities. Given what you now know about the organization and your future internship position and work, make a list of all the learning objectives in each of the three categories, thinking of them as potential goals.
- Clarify each objective. Be sure each objective is specific, measurable and achievable. Use language like “To develop/acquire/increase … ” Review them again. Are they realistic and attainable?
- Prioritize your objectives. Consider the objectives you listed and their relative importance to you and what you hope to learn and to gain from this experience. What do you want most want to achieve? What would be less important for you to achieve?
- Draft your Learning Plan. Try to come up with at least three objectives for each of the three categories of learning objectives, using the downloadable Learning Plan document as a template.
- Use your Learning Plan. Remember, your Learning Plan is not meant to limit your learning. Rather, the goal of the Learning Plan is to keep you intentional and focused, so you can have a clear understanding of expectations, as can your internship supervisor.
For guidance in developing your summer internship Learning Plan, email the Pace Center at pace@princeton.edu and request an appointment to meet with a Summer Internship Advisor.