Student Partnership (Internship)

The Learn Foundations Internship is a 12-week summer programme that supports a working partnership with students from across the University and the Learning, Teaching and Web (LTW) directorate.

Each year, student interns and LTW staff collaborate, through the internship, to improve the University’s virtual learning environment (VLE), Learn, for the next academic year.  

Since the internship started in 2019, LTW has successfully recruited over 70 student interns to work with the service team, supporting a variety of tasks, ranging from course migrations through to accessibility reviews. 

The student interns play a vital part in the work that the LTW delivers, and since 2019 the interns have performed over 17,300 course migration tasks and undertaken over 2,400 accessibility audits (selected from a random sample and marked against a set matrix, which is reviewed annually against the most up-to-date Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [WCAG]). 

A two tone blue graphic that says: Since 2019, student interns have helped to perform 17,300+ course migrations and 2,400+ accessibility audits.

The Learn Foundations Internship has supported a marked improvement to course accessibility for both staff and students across the University, which continues to be enhanced each year. It has helped the University to: 

  • Support annual accessibility reviews via a top-down approach across all Schools and Colleges; 
  • Encourage good practice training and guidance for staff; 
  • Empower students to be accessibility advocates and ambassadors to promote accessibility amongst their peers and teaching staff.  

The internship has also given students a chance to work in partnership with the LTW project and service teams, some beyond the 12-week duration, which has helped to strengthen their understanding of virtual learning and support new and continuing students at the University. 

Take a look at some of the work the LTW student interns have been involved with over the years: 

Learn Foundations Student Intern Conference Posters 

2019 Student Achievement: The achievement poster celebrates the successes of the student interns working to improve the online learning experience.  

Document 

LF Student poster achievement (4.88 MB / PDF) 

2019 Student Accessibility: The accessibility poster explains the tasks the student interns carried out to provide Schools with an overview of their courses in relation to accessibility requirements.    

Document 

LF student accessibility poster (2.38 MB / PDF) 

2021 Student Heart of the Approach: Members of our Learn Foundations student intern team designed and created a poster for the 2021 Learning and Teaching Conference.  The poster shows how student interns are at the heart of our approach and have brought their learning experiences to this role with Learn Foundations.   

Document 

LF Student poster (288.72 KB / PDF) 

Learn more about the impact of the Learn Foundations Internship 

Student reflections:

Spotlight on Learn Foundations: Roads, Bridges, and Roadmaps – Building Courses on Learn 

In this blog post, Triin Sulengo an undergraduate philosophy student describes the experience of successfully training staff on the use of Learn as analogous to the principles of effective urban planning and cartography design. 

Spotlight on Learn Foundations: Working as an intern during lockdown 

In this blog post Rory Shaw, a fourth-year Mathematics student at The University of Edinburgh, describes his experience as an intern with the Learn Foundations Project during lockdown, and the community-building activities he took part in. 

Spotlight on Learn Foundations: A backstage pass 

In this blog post, Claudia Jones, a fourth- year history and sociology student, describes her experience of working on the Learn Foundations team as a student intern, and illustrates how the contribution of student interns was integral to the University’s successful transition to digital and hybrid teaching and learning. After the internship  

ISG Summer Intern Survey - 2021 – 2024 data 

This dashboard displays the results of the Unitemps summer internship survey, since 2021. The survey assesses the satisfaction of interns who completed a summer internship in Information Services – including but not limited to the Learn Foundations Student Internship Programme.  

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