Accounting Students' Reflections on a Regional Internship Program

Abstract

The opportunity to gain professional industry experience for accounting students while undertaking theirundergraduate degree provides them with both a competitive edge in the marketplace and an opportunity toexperience the activities undertaken in their chosen profession. Structured experiential learning programsprovide students with the practical opportunity to apply their knowledge in an industry context and also toreflect on their personal learning journey. This paper explores the learning contribution of students’reflection-based assessments in an innovative and flexible internship program based on an e-learningframework. Through a preliminary investigation, it has been identified that after undertaking this internshipprogram, accounting students from an Australian regional university have advanced their learning pertainingto workplace preparedness, understanding and application of accounting principles, generic skillenhancement, and consolidation of accounting as their chosen professional career. The paper suggests that aninternship program such as the one examined contributes to the professional accountancy bodies’ andcommunity’s expectations of accounting graduates possessing key cognitive and behavioural skills.

Keywords

• Accounting students
• Internship programs
• Industry experience
• Work related learning