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CSCI Y399 Project in Professional Practice

CSCI Y399 Project in Professional Practice

The Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering believes real-world experience is a valuable part of any educational program. Internships provide an avenue for students to build that critical experience, and Luddy students can receive credit for selected, career-related work that involves professional activity representative of informatics.

Y399 Project in Professional Practice internship satisfies an advanced course requirement. A student will receive credit for designing, executing, and documenting a project assignment selected in consultation with his or her employer. Employment must involve a project for which the student has substantial independent involvement as well as close supervision by the employer and the project must be related to the degree.

Students are required to complete 180 hours of supervised work during their project internship to receive the advanced course credit for Y399 (3 credit hours only). Students may repeat Y399 during a different semester for another 3 credit hours (i.e., a maximum of 6 credit hours).

Prerequisites

Must be admitted to the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Completion of core courses with a C- or better (C211 or C200, C212, C241, C343)
Hold junior or senior class standing
Must be in good academic standing (minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0 or better)

PLEASE NOTE: All internships for academic credit are subject to standard course fees for the University. Use the Office of the Bursar's Tuition Estimator to estimate your semester fees.

Additionally, applications received fewer than five days prior to the start of classes the semester during which the internship will take place will be subject to late registration fees.

Finding employment

There are multiple avenues to find an internship that will satisfy the requirements for our Y399 course. They include:

Through University Career Fairs in the fall or spring semester, and/or the Bloomington Technology Partnership Career and Internship Fair in the spring
Through on-line internship postings in the Career Services Handshake system or other online resources
Through your own personal contacts or efforts to secure your own internship
Through the IU Career Development Center on-line postings or fairs (though most will come through the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering instead)
Through other assistance from Career Services

Approval

Y399 internships must be approved by Luddy before any authorization to enroll will be given. The approval decision will be based on the prerequisites listed above and the project proposal.

To apply, potential interns should visit the Internship for Credit application.The application is expected to include a description of the project(s) you will be working on during the internship. It is recommended that you consult with your supervisor before completing this application. Please note that your employer must agree to provide meaningful feedback regarding an intern’s performance during the internship (as part of the end-of-semester evaluation) before your application can be approved.

It is preferred that students submit their application as soon as possible after securing an internship (i.e., the previous semester). Applications must be submitted no later than the end of the second week of the semester during which the internship will begin.

Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering staff will verify that interns are in full compliance with prerequisite requirements. Once the application form is submitted, contact the faculty member and set up a meeting to discuss the proposed project and the expectations and requirements for the internship. The internship application will NOT be approved without the faculty meeting. For remote students, a conference call or Skype meeting may also be arranged. After the application has been approved, interns will be authorized to register for the Y399 course.

Major considerations for the approval of a project internship include (1) whether the intern will have a project assignment providing adequate experience, (2) whether the student has provided adequate technical details about the project, its goals, technologies used, and information about other responsibilities and activities, and (3) will the student be able to write the required project report at the conclusion of the internship.

Y399 Deliverables

Before the start of your internship

To receive academic credit for the Y399 internship, each intern must complete a series of deliverables. We suggest you print this document and use it as a checklist.

After the application is submitted, schedule a meeting with the Y399 faculty member to discuss the project, the expectations, and the requirements for the internship. The faculty meeting is required prior to the approval of internship application. For remote students, a conference call or Skype meeting may be arranged.

At the start of your internship:

Y399 interns are required to prepare and submit an outline, proposal, or report of the selected project or topic by the end of second week of the semester/internship through Canvas. The content should be pertinent to the student’s internship assignment and further enhance knowledge and/or ability to do the job. It should:

List the Learning Outcomes and how student hopes to achieve them by completing this project
Include a tentative schedule of significant tasks, duties, responsibilities, etc. and projected completion dates
Use of project management software such as Microsoft Project 2013 to schedule and describe tasks is encouraged
Use of Gantt Charts to visually describe project timeline is encouraged

This is a tentative outline and is subject to reasonable change as determined by the internship supervisor. Submit an updated outline/proposal if the project changes.

During your internship:

Status reports must be completed and turned in via Canvas by Monday at noon of each even-numbered week of the semester. Status reports should contain the following information:

How the internship is going
Any questions or concerns the intern may have
Any difficulties the intern may be experiencing
Any changes in the terms of the internship, such as:
- Ending date
- Scope or type of project is different from the contract
- Unexpected termination of the project
- Change of employer status
- Any other information that might be important
Summary of tasks completed in prior two weeks
One paragraph outlining what the student believes are the most important concepts they have learned during the previous two weeks
Two weeks prior to the end of the internship, students should include in their status report an outline of what will be included in the final project report

At the end of your internship:

Schedule a faculty Meeting to review your project work prior to the last week of the semester/internship. For remote students, a conference call or Skype meeting may be arranged. This meeting may be at the employer’s location.

Y399 interns are required to write a three- to five-page paper summarizing their experiences during the internship. This report is due eight days before end of the semester/internship through Canvas.The paper should be well organized (the organization should be described in an introduction) and should:

Describe the structure of the employer and the intern's place within that structure
Summarize the intern's accomplishments during employment
Discuss the relationship between the intern's academic coursework and the internship
Establish a relationship between the internship and the intern's future career goals
Consider how the internship might lead to full-time employment in this company (both from the intern's perspective and that of the company)

The employer shall submit an evaluation of the student's performance indicating satisfactory completion of responsibilities via the Luddy Careers site. The evaluation form will be sent to the listed internship supervisor via email near the end of the internship term. Please work with your immediate supervisor to ensure that the evaluation form is discussed with you and is submitted in timely manner.

At the completion of the internship, the student shall submit an evaluation of their internship experience via the Luddy Careers site. A reminder email will be sent by the system around the date listed as the end of the internship term.

Y399 interns must write a paper that describes a substantial project that was completed as part of the internship. This paper is due eight days before end of the semester/internship through Canvas. The paper should be professional in both form and content, and should be 3,000-4,000 words in length. Documentation written as part of the employment activities is often suitable as the basis for this paper. The content of the paper should emphasize the project. It should not be a diary. That is, the report should discuss what you did, not how you did it.

The following is a guide of topics that the paper may address. It is not meant to be exhaustive or required, although it is typical of most projects.

Organizational context: a description of the company and computing environment for which the project was undertaken.
Goals: describe the reasons for which the project was undertaken; that is, the intended benefits and results.
Specification: describe how the project achieved those goals.
Tools: discuss whether or how the software environment constrained the required design decisions.
Product: describe those things produced to achieve the project goals, which may be software, multimedia, web pages, information analysis, etc.
Testing and evaluation.
Conclusion.

Submission & deadlines

All end-of-internship deliverables must be turned in eight days before the end of the semester/internship. For any changes to deadlines, please contact the instructor directly. For other questions and problems, you can send an email to sice+internships@indiana.edu.

If the internship extends into the following semester, deliverables must be turned in 30 days after the conclusion of the internship. Please note that in past years there has been a longer grace period for completing all internship requirements. That will no longer be the case, and grades will be lowered by one letter grade increment for every week that passes beyond the deadline.

To receive a grade for the summer term, materials must be submitted by Friday of the fifth week of second summer session (eight days before graduation). If this deadline is not met, students will receive a "deferred" (R) grade for the term. After materials have been submitted and graded, the "deferred" will then be changed to the actual grade earned.

Grading

As the course is an academic activity, the report will be graded according to academic standards. Roughly one-quarter of the grade will be based on the writing of the report, one-quarter on the content of the report, and one-half on the quality and scope of the project. This reflects the statement: "English is our most important professional tool, use it with precision." The first edition of William Strunk's writing guide, The Elements of Style, is a great reference for issues such as knowing when to use "that" and when to use "which" in a modifying clause.

CSCI Y399 Project in Professional Practice

Prerequisites

Finding employment

Approval

Y399 Deliverables

Before the start of your internship

Instructor Meeting

At the start of your internship:

Internship project proposal/outline

During your internship:

Status reports

At the end of your internship:

Faculty Meeting

Internship report

Supervisor's evaluation form

Student evaluation of internship form

Project report

Submission & deadlines

Department of Computer Science resources and social media channels