As more students equate the value of a college education with its ability to improve their future job prospects, colleges and universities are adding career preparation more intentionally into their academic and co-curricular activities. This confluence of career and curriculum has generated increasing interest in work-based learning (WBL), a pedagogic strategy that provides students with opportunities to apply their curricular learning in real-life settings with employers. While there is general agreement that WBL can be an effective and important pedagogy, it is not a singular practice. The definition or designation of WBL can differ across institutions and organizations, researchers, and educators, and the experience itself can vary in intensity, length, curricular alignment, and other dimensions.

Understanding the various manifestations of work-based learning is important to maximizing its potential impact on students’ academic and post-graduation experiences. Each type requires different resources and stakeholder support to be implemented properly, and when faculty, staff, or students lack clarity or familiarity with the terminology, buy-in and engagement in the practice can suffer. In this blog post, we share a taxonomy of work-based learning experiences to help instructors and academic administrators select among the many options when adding or integrating these activities into curricula. Policy makers and business leaders can benefit from understanding how students can become involved in the local, national, or international workforce prior to graduation, while students and their advisors may also appreciate greater clarity on WBL options as they consider the offerings of specific disciplines or institutions.

Before elaborating on the various kinds of WBL, it may be helpful to connect WBL to the broader category of experiential learning, alongside practices like service-learning, study abroad, and case-based learning. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle outlines a four-step process in which students participate in concrete experiences, then reflect on those experiences, think ahead to how insights from that experience could apply in the future, and finally, plan to take action based on those insights.

Dimensions of Work-Based Learning

WBL experiences can be classified along several different dimensions, but there are no universally accepted standards or frameworks for such classification. One of the most common and easily identifiable aspects of any WBL experience is how much time a student spends participating, both in terms of duration and intensity. WBL experiences can last from just a few hours to several years and can be pursued on a full-time or part-time basis. The outcomes or impacts of any given WBL experience should be calibrated to the amount of time a student spends, but that can vary dramatically from experience to experience. More time dedicated to the WBL experience should provide more opportunities for learning and reflection, but the quality of the experience often tempers that relationship.

Another common element of WBL is relevance to the student’s academic and career goals. As with time commitment, there are no standard metrics to measure that alignment, and any such attempt is likely to be highly contextual to the student and the WBL experience. There are ways to build in greater relevance, such as embedding WBL in courses and degree programs, or providing students with professional advising as they select WBL experiences that, ideally, align with future employment opportunities. As with time commitment, it is safe to assume that greater relevance is better, but there are limited means to make that connection rigorously and at scale.

Compensation is also an important consideration of the WBL experience. Certain kinds of WBL experiences may offer college credit, fulfill an academic requirement, and/or provide a salary or stipend. The specific compensation for a WBL experience can have important equity implications for who is able to participate. Unpaid experiences that require significant time, require commutes, or require relocation, for example, can preclude lower-income students from participating, thereby limiting their opportunities.

It is important to note that in most cases, WBL opportunities or expectations are part of the academic curriculum, not simply employment while enrolled. While faculty members, administrators, advisors, and others may all be involved in identifying and facilitating WBL experiences, it is the integration with students’ academics that distinguishes WBL from employment or engaging in other developmental activities. Work-study, for instance, is often not considered WBL because students obtain these opportunities on their own and there is usually no relationship between work-study positions and academic programs.

Types of Work-Based Learning

As noted above, there is no standard framework or hierarchy within which to organize a list of different kinds of WBL experiences. That lack of standardization also means that there is often overlap between how WBL experiences are defined and described. Governmental agencies, educational institutions, and employers create their own categories for the WBL experiences they offer, support, or endorse, so any list of such activities is inherently somewhat arbitrary. The categories and descriptions offered below are generally ordered from the highest duration and intensity experiences to those that often require less time and intensity. For each, we provide a broad description of the activity and how it typically integrates with students’ academic experiences.

Apprenticeships. Perhaps the most immersive and most regulated WBL experience, these opportunities are on-the-job training programs, often under the close guidance of an experienced mentor, that can last up to three years of full-time or close to full-time work. Such programs are most common, but not exclusively, in the skilled trades. The US Department of Labor and State Apprenticeship Agencies oversee Registered Apprenticeship Programs, which certify that apprenticeship programs with specific employers meet certain quality standards. Apprenticeships may be a growth area for WBL in the future as supporting more such opportunities is a bi-partisan issue. While apprenticeship programs can exist without being affiliated with a postsecondary institution, this form of WBL is often associated with community colleges due to alignment between their academic offerings and workforce preparation mission.

Cooperative Education (Co-op). Co-ops are another WBL example that typically involves full-time work, during which semesters of full-time work are interspersed with semesters of a full course load. These three-to-six month opportunities are usually paid and associated with a specific academic program or degree requirement. Given the relevance of co-op placements and students’ academic or career goals, many colleges and universities employ administrators to identify co-op opportunities and advise students in the process of selecting and applying for such positions. Students can focus on both “soft skills” and “hard skills” in most co-op experiences because they are fully immersed in the work culture of their employer and employers often have higher expectations of students for making an impact than other kinds of student workers.

Internships. Often confused or conflated with co-ops because of their many similarities, internships are more likely to be part-time, shorter in duration, and less well integrated into the employing organization. Internships are, however, much more common than co-ops, and the positive impacts of internships on post-college earnings are well documented. That value, however, is not available to all students as many internships are unpaid, leading to substantial equity gaps in who can participate in them. In addition, as part-time experiences, many internships are place-specific and inaccessible to students attending college in localities with fewer businesses. The proliferation of remote internships during the COVID-19 pandemic has mediated this limitation to some degree.

Practicums. While practicums are often confused with internships, these WBL experiences have more in common with apprenticeships. Practicum experiences are closely tied to a specific academic program and are often a required element of licensure for a profession, such as nursing. These highly structured experiences center around observation of professionals in the field and will occasionally involve low stakes hands-on activities. Practicums are usually unpaid, though most students receive college credit or fulfill an academic requirement for successful completion.

Project-based Learning (PBL). While many students take on projects as part of a course, not all participate in PBL, which calls for sustained and instructor-supported involvement in real-world, authentic tasks, often in partnership with outside employers or organizations. While PBL is often associated with skill development in areas that employers find valuable, there is not yet conclusive evidence as to how much or how many PBL experiences lead to the most positive outcomes. Along with the promise of this approach, there is also a cost in terms of course (re)design and instructor professional development to implement PBL well.

Externships. Largely focused on observation of a workplace or professional setting, externships most often involve job shadowing and attending meetings in order to be introduced to a field or industry. These experiences are usually unpaid and last for a day to a few weeks. Externships are most useful in the career exploration phase of a student’s career development process, allowing them to get a realistic picture of what working in a field or profession looks like as well as making personal connections that could be leveraged in the future.

Benefits of Work-Based Learning

When implemented well, WBL provides many benefits to students, employers, and institutions. One of the most important benefits for students is enhanced employability and a competitive edge in the job market after graduation. As many students have experienced, “…it’s hard to get a job without previous work experience, and it’s hard to get work experience without a job.” More specifically, paid internships have been associated with higher post-college earnings even when controlling for graduate demographics and academic discipline. Project-based learning is also associated with a wide variety of positive outcomes for students, although most of the supporting research is quasi- or non-experimental. There is agreement in the field, however, that students benefit from the application of course content in the real world, which can also help increase student motivation and retention.

One of the primary benefits for employers is early access to talent as many graduates return to the employers or industries in which their WBL experiences were based. There are also opportunities to close the perceived skills gap of recent college graduates by becoming involved in the preparation of students entering their local job markets.

Some institutions believe that offering robust WBL opportunities may help with student retention. There is some evidence to support such beliefs for specific kinds of WBL opportunities, such as internships and cooperative education in particular disciplines, but the quality and context of those experiences are also an important factor. The most empirically documented benefits of PBL relate to learning, course content, and student attitudes rather than strong associations with retention or employment outcomes.

As with many aspects of higher education, there are often gaps in which students can access WBL and its benefits, depending on their backgrounds and the types of institutions they attend. These gaps can be especially pronounced for community college students who often have existing employment and family responsibilities. Institutional leaders need to monitor which of their students are accessing WBL and work to remove barriers to access in order to ensure that equity gaps are lessened or eliminated.  WBL learning also can contribute to improving career pathways and economic mobility post graduation.

Evaluating Work-Based Learning

As with all educational experiences, the only way to know if programs are working as intended is through systematic assessment and evaluation. Systematic evaluation of WBL opportunities is, unfortunately, uncommon in higher education, leaving students with opportunities for these experiences at risk for inconsistent, inequitable, or ineffective WBL practices. Any evaluation strategy should focus on the experiences and outcomes students are having with the WBL opportunities. Key questions that should be addressed include:

  • What is the quality of the WBL experience being provided?
  • What skills are students learning or advancing during the WBL experience?
  • How aligned is the WBL experience to students’ academic and career goals?
  • How accessible are WBL experiences to different groups of students?
  • What post-college outcomes are impacted by participation in the WBL experience?

Each of these questions could contain many subcomponents depending on the students involved, the nature of the WBL experience, and the intended outcomes articulated beforehand.

Implementing Work-Based Learning

College leaders and policy makers are increasingly interested in WBL for the varied benefits it can offer students, institutions, and employers. It is a powerful pedagogy with proven potential to positively impact students’ learning, career development, and post-college outcomes. Differences in the scale and scope of each kind of WBL impact how instructors and institutions should approach integrating these kinds of activities into their courses and curricula. An individual instructor can add project-based learning effectively to a single course with a small amount of networking and course redesign, but successfully making co-ops or internships a requirement for all students requires substantial coordination and resource allocation across an institution. As instructors, administrators, and policy makers consider implementing one, or several, forms of WBL, they should carefully consider the alignment between the intended outcomes for such an initiative; the interest, resources, training, and infrastructure available; and how the metrics of success will be monitored during the start-up of the initiative and into the future. Approaching WBL with clarity, intentionality, and a commitment to continuous improvement, colleges and universities can unlock its full potential, creating meaningful opportunities for students to succeed both academically and professionally.