Wow! Virtual Internship Just as Helpful as Virtual School

Rejoice! According to a recent study, students engaged in virtual internships reported that they are just as helpful as virtual school was during the 2020-2021 year. The study looked at statistics such as the percentage of participants whose camera is on, daily time spent on work/school, skills acquired, and overall participant enjoyment to inform the educated and mathematical assessment.

At school, the average "camera-on" student still turned their camera off 35% of the time. 28% of virtual school attendees never turned their cameras on at all. Virtual internships saw similar numbers as the average participant had cameras off 40% of the time, and 25% of attendees never turned on their cameras. These numbers roughly indicate that about a fourth of participants were probably not even in attendance, which doesn't sound like a lot until we say that 75% of participants were in attendance.

Students spent an average of 6 hours a day on Zoom at both virtual school and virtual internships. This provided several hours for students to complete busy work, respond to emails, and stare at the wall, the top activity for participants both at school and internships.

More similar numbers from the survey show that interns gained on average 0 skills this summer in their online internships. While usually, businesses would be concerned that interns did not develop a single skill, the same survey declared that students lost skills at virtual schools with an average of -1 skills gained, so comparatively, it's not so bad.

Finally, the survey objectively measured participant enjoyment by asking students to rate their virtual school and internship as good, mediocre, poor, horrible, toxic, or lethal. The results were the exact same for both. Of the 1,500 respondents, 1 responded "good," 3 responded "mediocre," 204 responded "poor," 307 responded "horrible," 422 responded "toxic," and 608 responded "lethal."

Despite adversity, virtual internships persevered and managed to be just as much of a success as this past year of virtual school!