Internship Reflective Report and Poster Presentation — Professional Practice in an Industry Placement
An internship module assessment asks students to convert a period of workplace experience into evidenced academic reflection. It is not a report on what the host organisation does; it is an account of what changed in the student's own understanding of their discipline as a result of working outside the taught programme. The written component typically runs to around three thousand words and is built in weighted sections. An opening section covers how the placement was secured — the reasoning behind the choice, the search and application process, and what that process itself taught the student. The bulk of the marks then sit on the reflection proper: what the student actually did, how existing disciplinary knowledge held up when applied in an unfamiliar setting, and where gaps appeared. A final section addresses personal and professional development, supported by specific examples rather than general claims of having "grown in confidence." The second component is a short poster presentation summarising the placement and its learning, delivered live. Posters are assessed on professional presentation, clarity, correct referencing and balance — students commonly over-fill them with text that a viewer cannot read at presentation distance. Formatting requirements on this type of assessment are unusually prescriptive and carry marks: a cover page with name, student ID, tutor name and declared word count; a table of contents; page numbers; captions on every figure and table; specified font, size and line spacing; numbered headings; and a strict file-naming convention. Marks are lost here for no reason other than inattention. Note also that in-text citations and quotations usually count toward the word limit even when tables and references do not, and markers may simply stop reading once the limit is exceeded by more than the allowed margin. The defining challenge of reflective assessment at this level is criticality. Rubrics consistently distinguish description from evaluation: recounting tasks performed scores at the lower bands, while analysing why something was difficult, what it revealed about a gap in preparation, and what will be done differently scores at the top. Reflective frameworks give this structure, but they must organise genuine experience rather than substitute for it. This assessment is inherently personal — the content derives entirely from the student's own placement. Our support is therefore confined to guidance: explaining what distinguishes descriptive from critical reflection with worked examples, showing how a reflective framework structures a section, advising on poster layout and information density, checking formatting and referencing against the specification, and reviewing a student's own completed draft against the published rubric.
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