1.

Beyond Situated Learning:

Rethinking Internship Theory and
Practice in the Distributed Workplace

Jennifer L. Bay
Purdue University

Abstract: This chapter retheorizes internships as pedagogical moments for

students to learn what we have commonly called “soft skills.” I argue that
soft skills, which consist of communication, collaboration, ethics, work ethic,
critical thinking skills, and the like, are fundamentally rhetorical skills that
require individuals to learn how to read and respond effectively to different
workplace situations, people, technologies, and problems. Workplace super-
visors and human resource professionals across all disciplines agree that soft
skills are highly desired by employers, but there is little agreement on if and
how they can be taught to students. New internship configurations such as
virtual internships, global internships, and online education make soft skills
all the more necessary for success. If the most desirable quality in job seekers
is soft skills, then we should actively teach and cultivate them. Today’s
internship practicum should include more about how to function effectively
in a job using soft skills; as such we need to develop different pedagogical
interventions that cultivate these skills.
Keywords: internships, soft skills, experiential learning
Key Takeaways:
ƒ Internship practica can cultivate soft skills via opportunities to read, re-
spond, and critically reflect on a variety of different workplace rhetorical
contexts.
ƒ Soft skills instruction is more relevant and “teachable” in the context of
the kinds of distributed technical communication work and internship ar-
rangements that interns face.
ƒ Case study pedagogy, attention to diversity, and modular course structures
can foster soft skills development by asking students to critically reflect on
how they can deploy soft skills to address workplace issues.

The 1990s and early 2000s saw a surge in scholarship theorizing how techni-
cal and professional communication (TPC) students learn through internships
(e.g., Anson & Forsberg, 1990; Beaufort, 1999; Freedman & Adam, 1996; Gaitens,
2000; Little, 1993; Savage, 1997; Smart & Brown, 2002; St.Amant, 2003; Tovey,
2001). Long integrated into TPC undergraduate majors, internships have been
seen as a critical component for learning technical communication principles
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37514/TPC-B.2020.1121.2.01 13
and workplace practices. Melonçon & Henschel (2013) note that over half of all
TPC undergraduate programs require an internship course. Internships, then,
serve as a critical bridge between the academy and industry, allowing students,
supervisors, and academics to forge connections. Situated learning and legitimate
peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) became key concepts for theo-
rizing how TPC students learn via internship opportunities, but these theories
often accounted for learning in traditional office environments, in which interns
were mentored by veteran technical communicators, and internships were coor-
dinated by faculty.
Times have changed for TPC interns. In our global, distributed workplace
environments, internship work is vastly different. What was once a one-time
internship in a traditional office environment has been replaced by new arrange-
ments such as virtual internships, internships with start-ups, global and study-
abroad internships, micro-internships, contract work, unpaid internships, and
the expectation of multiple internships over a student’s college career (Durack,
2013; Gates, 2014; Leath, 2009; Perlin, 2012; Ruggiero & Boehm, 2016; Suzuki et
al., 2016; Yarbrough, 2016). In these new arrangements, technical communication
interns may not have seasoned TPC professionals as mentors or may not even
have any academic or industry mentor. Moreover, a student today will be expect-
ed to have at least 12–15 jobs during their lifetime (U.S. Department of Labor,
2019). While excellent research on internships has continued in the field (Baird
& Dilger, 2017; Bourelle, 2015; Katz, 2015; Kramer-Simpson, 2018), how interns
learn and how we might teach them differently in these new TPC contexts and
work arrangements is less understood.
In light of these shifts, this chapter retheorizes internships as pedagogical
moments for students to learn what we have commonly called “soft skills.” I ar-
gue that soft skills, which consist of communication, collaboration, ethics, work
ethic, critical thinking skills, and the like, are fundamentally rhetorical skills that
require individuals to learn how to read and respond effectively to different work-
place situations, people, technologies, and problems. Workplace supervisors and
human resource professionals across all disciplines agree that soft skills are one of
the most desirable job qualifications (Robles, 2012), but there is little agreement
on if and how they can be taught (Shuman et al., 2005). If the most desirable
quality in job seekers is soft skills, then why aren’t we actively teaching, or at least
cultivating, them? In short, today’s internship practicum should include more
about how to function effectively in a job using soft skills; as such, we need to
develop different pedagogical interventions that cultivate these skills.
I start with a brief overview of internship theory in TPC, then move to how
TPC work and internships have shifted with a global, distributed landscape.
I outline emerging issues that TPC interns face, including working remotely,
working without TPC mentors or direct supervision, self-directed learning, tak-
ing initiative, using distributed technologies, gendered and racial conflict, cultural
differences, global communication, entrepreneurship, and collaboration. Using
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evidence from internship courses taught over the past 15 years, I then offer three
specific pedagogical approaches to soft skills training that can help students to
negotiate these emerging issues in productive and ethical ways. The key takeaway
here is that the TPC internship and its corresponding practicum should be less
about introducing students to the field and more about teaching students the
essential workplace soft skills that they will need to succeed in today’s global
workplace.

Internship Theory and Pedagogy in Professional

and Technical Communication
The field of professional and technical communication has produced a rich body
of research on internships, how developing writers benefit from internships, and
how they make the transition from school to work. Early scholarship in the field
was invested in identifying and describing the internship experience and what it
can do for the student (Gloe, 1983; Hull, 1977; Little, 1993; Southard, 1988; Tessier,
1975; Wyld, 1978). Much like internships are theorized in engineering and other
STEM fields, this early internship scholarship in TPC created an opening for
integrating experiential learning in TPC. Scholarly topics included how to set
up internship programs, what a successful internship looks like, and different
examples of internships (Bosley, 1988; Coggin, 1989; Hager, 1990). This early work
operated in a kind of epideictic fashion to argue that internships are important
learning opportunities but did not necessarily theorize what was being learned
and how interns were learning.
Several strands of research on internships soon emerged. Brenton Faber
(2002), Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam (1996), and Tiffany Bourelle (2014),
for instance, each focus on how the internship is an opportunity for students to
see themselves as “professionals” on the job. The professional internship is “an as-
pect of professional certification that prevails in one form or another across most
professions” (Savage & Seible, 2010, p. 53). A second and related dimension of
internship research is the transition from school to work. Research by Chris M.
Anson and L. Lee Forsberg (1990), Neil Baird and Bradley Dilger (2017), Anne
Beaufort (1999), Doug Brent (2012), and Susan M. Katz (1998) each present dif-
ferent ways in which interns move from seeing themselves as students to seeing
themselves as professionals. Anson and Forsberg (1990), for instance, describe a
specific learning process through which interns move from academically oriented
writing to workplace-specific discourses and processes. Beaufort (1999) similarly
provides a shift from one identity (student) to another (intern/worker).
Most of the scholarship that theorizes how interns make these shifts has been
based on Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s concept of situated learning. Lave and
Wenger (1991) argue that learning is situated in a community of practice. An
apprentice enters into a community of practice as a newcomer and is initiated, so
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to speak, into that professional community. In this model, “legitimate peripheral
participation” introduces newcomers through immersion in the community and
absorbing its modes of action and meaning. In many instances, this immersion
occurs through in-person apprenticeships. Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam
(1996) posit that in legitimate peripheral participation, learners do not fully par-
ticipate and that the learning that occurs is incidental, drawn forth more by the
community of practice (p. 399). While Freedman and Adam theorize the learning
as “authentic,” the emphasis on peripheral still holds. In this model, interns are
working with or alongside a professional who models processes and practices;
thus, the model is predicated on professionals in the workplace doing the model-
ing or “teaching” of the intern.
The “teaching” in an internship, then, comes largely from the internship su-
pervisor, not the faculty member. Faculty tend to be in the role of coordinating
internships and making sure the academic parameters are in place. This focus on
internship coordination over teaching, mentoring, or coaching leaves the faculty
member as an observer of what is happening in the internship, which he or she
then uses to apply to future interns (see Anson & Forsberg [1990] for instance).
In TPC, we assume supervisors will train interns because they are in the writing
and communication professions; as such, what shines forth in our scholarship is
often what the student is doing/learning in the internship rather than how we are
teaching interns. As educators and scholars, we need to develop innovative ways
to support students in their internships, coach them to develop the professional
skills they need on the job, and help them to make explicit connections between
learning on the job and their academic coursework.
While there has been a robust discussion of experiential learning in intern-
ships, little explicit connection has been made to soft skills. Ironically, the de-
scription of situated learning and much internship literature related to legitimate
peripheral participation and communities of practice imply soft skill development.
Unlike academic learning, in which students attend classes, listen to lectures, read
textbooks, complete assignments, and take tests, internships are a form of ap-
plied learning, or learning in which students apply theories and concepts to a re-
al-world environment. Another way of understanding internships is as a situated
learning activity; in this case, learning is situated not in a classroom environment
where objective knowledge is conveyed but is situated within the activity in which
someone participates. Lave’s early work on situated learning is foundational for
this understanding. Lave (1991) posits that learning is always situated in a place,
among people, technologies, and cultural factors: “learning, thinking, and know-
ing are relations among people engaged in activity in, with, and arising from the
socially and culturally structured world” (p. 67). Epistemologically, situated learn-
ing is contextual, emplaced, and active. Lave (2009) further claims that “theories
of situated activity do not separate action, thought, feeling, and value and their
collective, cultural-historical forms of located, interested, conflictual, meaningful
activity” (p. 202). I highlight this sentence specifically because of the inclusion of
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terms normally associated with soft skills—value and feeling. Feeling and value
also influence one’s ability to learn in and from a situation. And while we might
want to see academic learning as objective learning, all learning is in fact situated.
For instance, college students might do very well in class academically but
have difficulty in applying what they know to real-world situations. Or they
struggle with traditional academic work and do extremely well applying what
they know in real-world situations. It is the rare student who can move between
both kinds of epistemological frameworks seamlessly. This may be partly because
there are differences in the skills needed to succeed in the university and the
soft skills needed in the workplace. Academic skills are honed by college stu-
dents over sixteen years of schooling and are different from workplace soft skills
where there is no safety net and employees must communicate and negotiate
with multiple stakeholders at once. As instructors, we can create the conditions
of possibility for students to understand these differences and invent out of them.
As Lave points out, “Doing and knowing are inventive in another sense: They are
open-ended processes of improvisation with the social, material, and experiential
resources at hand” (Lave, 2009, p. 204). That is, part of what we are cultivating in
internship experiences is gathering the resources necessary to invent meaning in
a new workplace context.
Since Lave and Wenger’s theories were introduced into the field, new intern-
ship formations have challenged and increased the pedagogical need for faculty
to facilitate internship learning. These new formations highlight a gap in the
TPC scholarship on internships: a lack of attention to instructor pedagogy, or at
least the pedagogy of the internship course or arrangement. In the new landscape
described below, this lack of attention to specific pedagogical approaches stands
out as a crucial need in current theories on internships.

Shifting Landscapes for Internships

Thus far, our pedagogies for internships have not changed over the past 30 years,
even though our students, their workplaces, and their internships have changed.
In Internships: Theory and Practice (2017), Charles Sides and Ann Mrvica predict
that trends such as managed education, the student as consumer, and internships
outside of an academic support system may affect the future of internships as
a way of learning by doing. Today, some of these trends have manifested, but
other trends have also emerged. Internships outside of an academic environ-
ment have definitely blossomed as more and more students take on multiple
internships while in college. By the time my students have taken the internship
practicum their senior year, they have already been in at least two to three intern-
ships. Popular websites and career advice suggest that students undertake mul-
tiple internships while in college. We’ve also witnessed an expanded discourse
about the exploitation of interns, the problems with unpaid internships, and sex-
ual harassment and discrimination against interns in multiple industries. Other
17
new internship formations include virtual internships, micro-internships, study
abroad internships, entrepreneurships, and service-learning internships. In these
situations, it’s no longer realistic to think we’re teaching students to write in one
particular industry or type of workplace. What we’re teaching is how to navigate
and succeed in an ever-changing workplace in which students may undertake
more than 15 jobs in their lifetime, often in different careers and industries that
have yet to be imagined. In such formations, new pedagogical challenges emerge:
remote work with little to no supervision, lack of TPC mentors or experts on
the job, self-directed learning, use of distributed technologies, gendered or racial
conflicts, cultural differences, global communication practices, and collaboration.
How do we cultivate learning in emerging internship formations? With the rise
of TPC programs comes the rise of technical knowledge in TPC theory and
practice. That is, TPC students are getting the “hard skills” they need in their
major courses; what’s needed is more instruction in the soft skills they need to
succeed in the workplace. Internship practica are the ideal place for practicing
and reflecting on the soft skills that they need to become successful in any pro-
fessional environment.

Rhetoric and Soft Skills in Emerging

Internship Configurations
Soft skills has become a buzzword to describe a specific skill set desired by com-
panies. As opposed to the “hard skills” of engineering, coding, building, account-
ing, and other specific technical skills or expertise, soft skills refers largely to the
communication and human interactive skills needed to succeed in a workplace.
Marcel Robles (2012) describes soft skills as “interpersonal qualities, also known
as people skills, and personal attributes that one possesses” (p. 453). Robles sur-
veyed business executives to come up with the ten soft skills most desired in
today’s workplace: “integrity, communication, courtesy, responsibility, social skills,
positive attitude, professionalism, flexibility, teamwork, and work ethic” (p. 453).
As many scholars note, these skills are not easily “taught” (Robles, 2012; Shuman
et al., 2005) because they are ways of being toward others, toward work, and
toward environments, which develop over time through situations, self-reflec-
tion, and applications. While students can read about soft skills, they must have
opportunities to examine their own abilities, see where they need work, gain
feedback from others, and test out these new skills as they are in development.
As employees experience different and new workplace situations, solve differ-
ent problems, and learn to work with different populations and colleagues from
different cultural backgrounds, they (hopefully) develop, refine, and hone these
interpersonal and soft skills.
Students with the best soft skills already have some meta-awareness of the
behaviors needed to succeed because they can “read” people well and/or interact
18
in large groups to produce consensus while also being able to advocate for them-
selves and others. This kind of rhetorical sensibility can be cultivated. I avoid
using the term “taught” because it implies that soft skills can be obtained and
held like rote learning, when they are only truly understood in practice, much
like rhetorical ability. Rhetorical ability, because it involves assessing the rhetori-
cal situation, learning about or understanding your audience, and adjusting your
writing/language/behavior to meet that audience, underlies all of the soft skills
listed above; there is a strong performative and improvisational dimension that
requires cultivation.

Pedagogical Cultivation of Soft Skills

If the TPC internship and its corresponding practicum are now less about intro-
ducing students to the field and more about teaching students the essential work-
place soft skills that they will need to succeed in today’s global workplace, what
assignments or approaches should we use? Programs have a variety of approaches
to supervising interns. Three common configurations that have emerged are one-
on-one counseling (independent study) with an internship coordinator; a tradi-
tional course where students must have an internship during the class—this is
often called a practicum; or an online course (distance education) with students
either in one major or across majors (Bay, 2017). As part of these configurations,
different conceptions of pedagogy are implicit. When internship supervisors of-
fer independent study credit, there is often the assumption that the internship su-
pervisor is teaching and mentoring the intern; as such, the internship coordinator
serves as almost a gatekeeper to ensure the student has learned or undertaken
the work. In a classroom situation, the assumption is that students have much
to teach each other in a more formal institutional structure. The online class also
provides that support but recognizes that interns can learn from students in other
majors and backgrounds.
Most of these pedagogical configurations still require weekly writing assign-
ments where students reflect on what they are doing/learning. The end of the
semester internship report is a common genre where the student reports on what
they did in the internship in order to earn credit. They may provide written up-
dates to internship coordinators throughout the internship, either in person or
online. The final report may contain samples of the internship work and may of-
ten be a report already composed as a requirement of their internship supervisor.
While TPC programs may have one or more of these configurations, students
are undertaking internships outside of those configurations as well, which means
there is no pedagogical infrastructure for internships.
At Purdue, our TPC internship course meets once a week for a two-hour
block. The first hour consists of engagement and reflection on the internship ex-
perience. Students are required to complete an internship work agreement form,
on which they collaborate with their supervisors on goals and supporting activities
19
for the internship. Worklogs, or guided reflections on the internship experience,
are shared with the class on a bi-weekly basis. Students bring samples of their in-
ternship work to share and receive feedback from classmates. Short readings and
articles about internship experiences are also discussed. The second hour focuses
on professional identity; students work on developing an online portfolio, Linke-
dIn and networking profiles, and presenting themselves as emerging professionals.
While students do receive mid-semester and final evaluations from their super-
visors, I have downplayed these components in their final grades. Very rarely do
internship supervisors provide critical comments or evaluations of work. As many
interns have reported, their supervisors do not want to provide negative comments
in case they might impact student grades. For students with virtual internships, it
is sometimes difficult to speak directly to supervisors or even maintain sustained
contact. For these reasons, plus the shifting dynamics of internships, I have slowly
shifted the course more toward a critical reflection on the internship experience.
Following Kristen Lucas and Jacob D. Rawlins (2015), I present a curricular
overview of how soft skills can be integrated into internship pedagogy. I fo-
cus specifically on the use of case studies, approaches to diversity and difference
through reflection, and self-directed online modules that students can complete
inside or outside of an official course or credit. These components respond to
contemporary exigencies such as COVID-19, the #metoo movement, and racial
conflict, all of which impact the development of an intern’s professional identity.

Case Study Approach

One approach that has been useful for cultivating soft skill development is the
case study method. In this situation, interns do not read about artificial or even
real-world based experiences with other professionals, as in Gerald J. Savage and
Dale L. Sullivan’s textbook (2001); rather, they write their own case studies to
share with their classmates and use as reflective development tools. Using cas-
es in TPC is a well-documented approach to teaching problem solving, critical
thinking, and decision making (Balzotti & Hansen, 2019; Mara, 2006; Pennell &
Miles, 2009), but little attention has been paid to having students write their own
cases. Having students write their own cases asks them to reflect on their own
soft skill development and to see how workplace problems are often embedded in
a web of communication, collaboration, and “people” issues. That is, a procedural
problem in the workplace—say an ineffective workplace process—is just as much
a structural issue, as in using the wrong process for the job, as it is a soft skills
problem—being able to collaboratively develop a different process and commu-
nicate that change to people who may not be amenable to a change.
An example I have referenced before (Bay, 2017) might help. A summer en-
gineering intern has trouble getting things done because she doesn’t know how
to communicate with the hourly workers on the shop floor. She problem solves
with her instructor and peers on ways to collaborate more effectively with this
20
group of co-workers. One of the suggestions provided is to bring something like
donuts to share with these workers in order to create goodwill and buy-in for her
ideas. She ultimately develops more camaraderie with these workers based on
this small, thoughtful act.
This instance is a perfect example of a case study at work. In order to be effec-
tive, case studies must describe a situation in which there is no clear or obvious
solution to the issue or problem that is being discussed. In such a situation, soft
or interpersonal skills are often part of the solution since much of the execution
of any solution in the workplace involves how it’s deployed, the personalities
involved, and the values being advocated. This intern had to figure out what the
shop floor workers needed in order to see her as someone they could trust and
respect. By collaborating on the problem in class, she was presented with several
different options but figured out ultimately that there were particular approaches
she could take to gain trust—all of which involved the successful deployment of
soft skills. Having students write their own cases on real-world workplace prob-
lems and issues can help them become aware of how they need to cultivate soft
skills as much as writing skills on the job.
David H. Jonassen (2006) provides a typology of case types that can be used
as case studies for different rhetorical purposes: exemplars, analogies, problems
to solve, and even student constructed cases. In his taxonomy, exemplar cases are
often used as examples to be followed; in such a situation, students study the case
and learn by reading through the thought process and solution to the problem. In
problem-based cases, students read through an authentic case with no clear solu-
tion and then work to try to solve the problem on their own; such an approach is
often used in legal and medical education. Student-generated cases, in Jonassen’s
approach, are often done in hypertext and allow others to move through the
problem as they see it.
In an internship environment, case studies can be based on a student’s per-
sonal internship experience or in combination with other workplace experiences.
They should be written as issues emerge on the job. In this approach, interns
are assigned to write and present a case study of a problem or issue on the job
based on their own experiences. Students must produce a detail-rich narrative of
a problem without judgment or bias and present it to the class. Everyone in class
writes a response or solution to the problem and shares it with the other interns.
Because each student writes a response based on their own internship formation
or orientation, they consider the issue from different angles. The intern chooses
an approach that best fits their situation and with which they feel most comfort-
able. If possible, the intern actually enacts the approach in their internship to see
what happens. The intern is thus exposed to different rhetorical approaches and
learns to adapt rhetoric to the circumstance. The intern reports back to class and
reflects on the outcome. Throughout this process, the intern learns what works
and what does not in their particular situation, while also reflecting on their rhe-
torical skill development.
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 Ideally, interns will write these cases as they emerge, so they could occur
throughout the semester without a defined due date. Often, in the writing of the
cases, interns may be able to solve their own issue, which teaches them how to
use writing and reflection to solve issues on their own without advice from others
or the teacher. More often when I have taught this assignment, students mull
over a situation at work for several weeks before they recognize it’s an issue to be
addressed. A common example are students who does not feel challenged by the
work they have been assigned in their internships and don’t understand why oth-
ers are getting more sophisticated work projects. In this situation, we often brain-
storm that it’s not that the intern is not competent or able but that they are not
actively and successfully communicating that competency with workplace cues
or other soft skills. Once the student hears how others might solve the issue on
the job, they have an arsenal of approaches that they can either try out or adapt
to fit their personality and situation. In this case, it might be providing written
progress reports to their supervisor on a daily basis, or it could be participating in
breaks with co-workers rather than continuing to work through them. In both of
these possible solutions, an intern must demonstrate competency through more
than just the final products, which is an example of rhetorical expertise in action.

Attention to Diversity and Difference

The social justice turn in TPC has highlighted the ways that we need to do better
at making students aware of structural and institutional inequities. The internship
course is an ideal location for asking students to reflect on racial and gendered
dynamics in the workplace. One approach that has proven useful is to reconsider
the experiences of interns as explored in some older scholarship in TPC. For
instance, I have students read Sherry G. Southard’s “Protocols and Human Re-
lations in the Corporate World” (1989), a 30-year-old essay that outlines expecta-
tions for interns in the workplace. While we might say this is a dated essay—and
it is—many of the points still hold since they often focus on soft skills cultivation:
observing behaviors, paying attention to interactions, and noticing how profes-
sionals interact. Translating those behaviors to actions, though, is different than
reading about them. We look at that essay and others to examine the gendered,
racial, and economic assumptions that are happening there. We then talk about
how workplaces are different today, or not. Similarly, students read classic es-
says that detail intern experiences, such as Anson and Forsberg (1990) and D.
Kathleen Stitts (2006), to look at unexamined assumptions about interns and
co-workers. For example, a series of recent articles by Kristin Pickering (2018a,
2018b, 2019) provides fascinating analysis of how interns manage emotions in the
workplace. However, reframing those experiences from the perspective of gender
and race provides starkly different conclusions about emotions in the workplace. I
reinforce these points through focused worklog prompts about how diversity and
difference appear in students’ workplaces and on readings about microaggressions
22
and conflict in the workplace; when students try to deny or elide discussions of
difference, we have a foundation to discuss why they are unable to see that dif-
ference.
After reading through and re-analyzing these narratives, students are much
more aware of how different behaviors and expectations emerge in the workplace.
On multiple occasions, I have had students bring up examples of sexual harass-
ment and microaggressions they have experienced in their internships. Before
they have the opportunity to read about and discuss these issues, they often do
not see their experiences as problematic and worthy of intervention. Reading and
reflection opportunities provide them with a vocabulary and a way of thinking
about these experiences. It also makes other students aware of these experiences
and how they would address them in their own internships. While not a “soft
skill” in Robles’ list, social awareness of microaggressions and harassment is part
of the interpersonal relations that are at the heart of soft skills training.

Modular Approaches to Internship Pedagogy

With the rise of virtual internships and recent shifts in higher education be-
cause of COVID-19, we need to take a modular approach to internship pedagogy.
Viewing internships as capstone courses taken in a major’s final semester or as
the sole experience in a program does not work when students are undertaking
internships throughout their entire time in the university. Positioning intern-
ships throughout the curriculum might be one approach to cultivating soft skills
throughout a major or program. In order to support such an approach, we might
need to take a modular approach to internship education. We have enacted this
approach partially at Purdue with our summer internship course for any majors
throughout the university. As I have written (Bay, 2017), internship courses that
focus on soft skills can be offered to students from different majors and programs
across the university. We’ve done this through an online summer internship
course that functions like a business writing “on the job” course. By focusing on
soft skills, students are able to cross the programmatic and disciplinary bound-
aries that might limit learning. In fact, the approach works quite well because
students constantly have to attend to different audiences and expectations.
A modular approach would allow for pedagogical interventions in situations
where there is no mechanism or ability to obtain course credit. Some students,
for instance, decline to obtain credit for their internship experiences because they
cannot afford the tuition expense. Micro-internships, like those offered by Park-
er-Dewey, are short-term projects that don’t fit a traditional internship credit
mechanism. Likewise, study abroad internships are often encapsulated in a study
abroad program and don’t always provide a mechanism for learning on the job.
Providing modules online that would allow students to gain proficiency in dif-
ferent areas of soft skills might be a way for students to reflect on their learning
and feel supported. Much like a badge system, modules could ask students to
23
reflect on different aspects of the internship experience or solve a problem, which
could provide some evidence of their ability to deploy different soft skills. An-
other model would be for programs to create discussion boards or learning man-
agement systems open to any TPC student undertaking an internship. While
someone might need to monitor these sites, such a configuration would provide
students with support for their learning outside of an academic structure. These
kinds of institutional structures can allow for support for students, while also
allowing faculty and staff to better understand what is happening for interns at
various points in their academic careers.

Future Directions
New developments such as virtual internships, global internships, and multiple
internships over time have shifted the opportunities for faculty to facilitate in-
ternship learning. We must move internship theory beyond situated learning and
legitimate peripheral participation to an understanding of internships as rhetor-
ical phenomena in which students learn “soft skills,” regardless of the discipline
or field of study. Soft skills, which consist of communication, collaboration, eth-
ics, work ethic, critical thinking skills, and the like, are fundamentally rhetor-
ical skills that require individuals to learn how to read and respond effectively
to diverse situations, people, and problems. Workplace supervisors and human
resource professionals across all disciplines agree that soft skills are one of the
most sought job qualifications, but there is little literature about how and if they
can be taught. Internships provide the perfect opportunity to cultivate soft skills
because they are opportunities to read, respond, and critically reflect on a variety
of different workplace situations. Such cultivation can occur in a variety of in-
ternship configurations, whether they be course based or independent study. But
reorienting our internship pedagogy toward soft skills as rhetorical work requires
us to incorporate attention to diversity and difference, bring in more examples
and case studies, and implement a modular approach to internship education.
Coupled together, these additions can help move the internship practicum for-
ward to address the new realities of student interns.

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