Xavier Rambla Sociologia

Master’s degrees often require students to take an internship. In social sciences, development and education studies this activity normally consists of collaborating with a research center, an NGO, an international organisation or a government agency.

Both the mentors who receive a student in an external organisation and the coordinators of internships in universities participate in the assessments of internships. As a rule, mentors fill a grade sheet focusing on students’ interpersonal skills. Students submit varied types of academic reports to their coordinator, normally including pieces of their work, reflection on their activity and more formal analyses. GLOBED internship will start in the Summer of 2016. Students’ reports will include an analysis of the organisation and a collection of evidence showing their activity there.

Students can analyse either a programme or an organisation by applying a very simple criterion, namely looking at how the strategy, the processes and the results match. An array of tools are quite helpful to conduct these analyses:

• The UNDP evaluation handbook, the European Framework for Quality Management method, the Ivàlua Guies d’Avaluació (in Catalan), the EU Project Cycle Management guidelines and many other general outlines follow the whole journey from design through implementation up to results.
• Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis as well as Systems Grant-Making provide valuable support to make sense of strategies.
• Finally, contribution analysis and randomised controlled trials account for results.