Essay Example on The transition from an academic student to a working Professional

The transition from an academic student to a working professional can be quite challenging as they are bound to encounter problems in the actual working environment that have not been anticipated in their campus life Sadarangani 2014 Thus the integration of experiential learning such as internship in the academy benefits the transition according to Scholtz 2006 internship bridges the gap between the academic world and the working environment Internship originated in United States during the early 1900s as a non traditional education approach based on experiential learning Driscoll 2006 as cited in Duncan 2016 Stretch and Harp 1991 defined internship as a supervised off campus working and learning experience which earns academic credit Internships give students opportunities to apply and extend the theoretical knowledge acquired in the classroom to practical experiences while also allowing them opportunities to view and evaluate careers to which their academic interests may lead Ideal internships establish positive contacts with prospective employers and are key to building professional networks for students as cited in Amer 2014 

Tackett et al 2001 acknowledged internship s increasingly important role in education over the past decade which is supported by Beebe 2009 who affirmed that internship provides students with chance to improve their skills interactions with more experienced professional and practice in different areas of the field The growing importance and benefits of internship programme encourages the programme to be implemented in many tertiary institutions around the world School of Informatics and Applied Mathematics SIAM University Malaysia Terengganu UMT is one of the tertiary institution which offers internship as one of the core courses for undergraduate programmes There are four 4 undergraduate programmes offered by SIAM which are i Bachelor of Computer Science Software Engineering ii Bachelor of Computer Science with Maritime Informatics iii Bachelor of Science Computational Mathematics and iv Bachelor of Science Financial Mathematics Pusat Pengajian Informatik dan Matematik Gunaan 2016 This project envisions the burden as an internship coordinator in which according to Zuriana 2016 who currently holds the responsibility as the internship coordinator for Bachelor of Computer Science Software Engineering programme in SIAM the process in managing the internship course is currently conducted manually Amir 2004 claimed that the manual process is deemed to be inefficient due to the growing number of undergraduates undergoing internship in SIAM over the years In response to this problem 

Amir 2004 proposed a web based management system as an alternative and efficient solution to complement the manual management process Implementing a web based management system aims to solve problems with information technology IT considering that revolution of information technology has produced radical transformations which leads us to the civilization of knowledge and information de Morentin 2003 In addition internet services are proliferating across the world allowing the nature of managerial processes in an organisation to change drastically In short this project sets to design and develop a web based internship management system in the effort of eliminating the current problems faced by stakeholders of the internship course in SIAM This chapter will discuss further on the problem statement and following this it outlines the objectives that the project intended to achieve The chapter concludes with an outline for the project scope and project deliverables Internship coordination is one of the fundamental business processes in SIAM According to Zuriana 2016 the current internship management process relies solely on e mails letter posting and paper documents for communication The lack of real time information is inefficient as it delays the delivery of information and is prone to the risk of overlooking emails particularly for internship coordinators who have to oversee a minimum of 100 students per semester In addition Amir 2004 identified several weaknesses with the manual internship management system which include delay in processing application loss of data or data redundancy inefficient data storage time consuming and lack of communication between the student and internal supervisor At most cases students undergo their internship at organisations which are located in a different location than that of UMT supervisors The distance becomes a barrier for UMT supervisors to keep track of the students internship progress Another disadvantage of the manual system is low data security which is supported by Mills Senn 2014 who stated that organisation which use paper based are prone to data security breach due to high risk of paper documents being lost damaged misfiled or fallen into the wrong hands 

The revolution of Internet and web technologies are at such rapid pace that today innovations in information technology are having significant impact across numerous domains of society Konsbruk 2009 Brusco 2011 found that the world is beginning to adopt electronic and paperless process which is shifting towards a greener approach Mills Senn 2014 specified that electronic document management has a huge impact towards an organisation in the aspect of reducing paper flow freeing up filing and storage space Masron et al 2016 stated that web based information systems WIS are convenient and cost effective tools to promote the accessibility efficient distribution effective administration and cross platform compatibility of engineering information which leads to significant productivity improvements Many universities and colleges have implemented web based internship management system as a solution to manage the internship programme in their institution in which each internship management system is designed specifically based on the processes and requirements of respective university Alcea Software 2007 MMU ITP Committee 2009 Universiti Teknologi Mara Perak 2009 Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 2006 United Arab Emirates University 2010 The main deliverables of this project are the web based internship system and the standard software engineering documents which are constructed in accordance with SIAM s final year project guidelines