Students’ Practicum Performance of Industrial Internship Program

This study was carried out on final year degree Business Management students between the years 2010 and 2011 with the objectives to analyse industry feedback on students’ practicum performance and their learning outcomes at the end of industrial practicum attachment. A total of 623 industrial evaluation reports from various industries were analyzed; focusing on two main components: cognitive outcomes and skills development outcomes of the students upon completion of a 20 weeks practicum. Feedback from the industries indicated that these students had acquired meaningful work knowledge, demonstrated good working skills with the right attitudes at the work place as deduced from the total mean scores 4.16 for these outcomes. The overall written comments were also favourable and this suggested that the industrial practicum training briefings, practicum curriculum and guidelines developed by the faculty has positive impact on these students prior practicum attachment to the industry. However, there are still areas for continual improvement to ensure students are well-prepared for practicum, further soft skill development and to improve the quality of their project papers.