I have been given a final assignment from my site supervisor, which is a report on the money aspect of trends. It is to be done the same way as my report on mobile technology earlier in the semester, with regards to method and formatting. I will collect and put together news blogs about the money aspect of trends, and evaluate them the same way I evaluated the news blogs on mobile technology in the earlier report.
However, I am completing the Final Report for Professor Franks this week, or by Thursday morning to get it done as soon as possible, to make sure it does not conflict with all my other work, to relieve stress, and to take a weight off of Professor Franks. Therefore, the final assignment from my site supervisor, which is essentially the same as my earlier mobile report and fulfills the same learning outcome, will not be included in the Final Report for Professor Franks. I have already met all the requirements for the Final Report, including meeting the number of required hours (I worked 137 hrs., which meets the requirement of 135 for the course). This brings me to one situation that some virtual interns may be unable to avoid. It is important to get the Final Report completed as soon as possible, but even when it is done and it has been turned in at an appropriately early time and not too close to the May 15 deadline, a site supervisor might have a final assignment to give the intern, in which case the intern will not be able to add it to the Final Report.
On a note regarding Learning Outcomes, an intern will of course have a set of learning outcomes at the start of a semester. However, there is no way for them to yet know exactly what types of assignments their site supervisor will give them. A site supervisor will likely give them assignments that will change their learning outcomes over the course of the semester. This is especially true if the site supervisor has never worked with interns in the SLIS program and therefore neither the SLIS department nor the site supervisor have a full professional understanding of each other. Furthermore, the SLIS department could have information about a site, which interns are supposed to use to create their learning outcomes. However, over the course of the semester, the site supervisor may make changes to their policies regarding interns and the work involved in the site, which will lead the intern to make changes to their learning outcomes.
Although I had to make some changes to my three learning outcomes, I felt that I fulfilled them with the assignments I was given. I did learn what I needed to know about new virtual technologies, mobile technologies, and virtual and 3D environments in general.
First, thank you for getting your report done early! It is much appreciated. Your comments about the SLOs changing over the semester is exactly right. In the email sent to site supervisors this morning, I stressed that you all had to submit a report to me that included how you achieved the learning objectives set out at the beginning of the term. But I also explained that if the SLOs were not complete due to a change in priorities at the site as opposed to the intern's inability to complete the tasks, interns would still receive credit. I know some of them are as concerned about this as you. Perhaps they will be better able to help the inters develop reasonable SLOs after they have worked with interns a few times.
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