Guidelines for Internships in the MBI Program

Purpose    

The purpose of an internship is to familiarize students with the actual practice of Business Informatics and to provide them with a deeper understanding of information and communication systems. In particular, students are expected to gain insights into the application or the development of information and communication systems, and the role that such systems play in and between organizations. An internship is different from vacation work or someone's regular employment. As a rule, persons working in a fulltime or parttime job will not do the internship in the organization they work for.

Timing

Students complete their internships in the fourth semester of the MBI program. The duration of an internship is 3 months. Exceptions are handled by the MBI Examination Board upon application.

Procedure

Each student planning to do an internship has to submit an application to the MBI Examination Board for approval stating: Name and address of the company offering the internship Contact person in that company Company description Type of work to be done by the applicant (provide a meaningful description of ½ to 1 page, including connections between the internship and the MBI program) Start date and end date of the internship Financial compensation (is the internship remunerated?) After completing the internship, the student has to submit a confirmation letter by the employer containing the same sections as above, filled with actual data about the internship, and a report as specified in the next paragraph.    

Report

A report about an internship will comprise 5 or more pages containing the following parts:

• Title page with
  • student data (name, matriculation number, address, e-mail, phone, ...)
  • company data (name, address, contact person, ...)
  • date (from - to) and location of internship
• Presentation of the organization in which the internship was done, reasons why this organization was chosen
• Description of the work done
• Evaluation of the internship. Some suggestions of topics to cover:
  • Were you able to apply what you learned in the MBI studies?
  • Did you learn new things that might be beneficial for your future career? Did you gain additional qualifications?
  • Overall assessment of the internship. (Were your expectations met? Would you recommend the internship you completed to other students? Would the organization accept MBI students for internships in the future?)