Introduction and guidance
This free badged course Internships and other work experiences lasts 24 hours and is comprised of eight weeks. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete a further study week. The eight weeks are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:
- What is an internship or work experience opportunity?
- What could I gain from an internship or other work experience?
- How to choose the right internship or work experience
- How to find a work experience opportunity – promoting myself in writing
- Obtaining a work experience opportunity – promoting myself in person
- How to make the most of my internship or other work experience
- Experiencing a virtual internship
- Next steps
You will be able to test your understanding of the course through the weekly interactive quizzes, of which Weeks 4 and 8 will provide you with an opportunity to earn a badge to demonstrate your new skills. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.
After completing this course, you should be able to:
- describe and identify different types of internship or other work experience opportunity
- reflect on existing skills and attributes and recognise how building on them through an internship or other work experience can bring value
- build an effective personal brand to use on social media and throughout the job application process
- identify strategies for maximising the chance of success. both during an internship or other work experience, and beyond
- define personal goals for undertaking an internship or other work experience, and produce a set of actions to support the achievement of these goals.
Moving around the course
In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you will find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.
It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.
The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.
Get careers guidance
This course has been included in the National Careers Service to help you develop new skills.