Challenge-driven internship for 50 JU students

The corona-pandemic has made it more difficult for students to find an internship. Therefore, Jönköping University (JU), Science Park Jönköping and the company Toxic Interactive Solutions have developed a challenge-driven, digital internship for JU students which is now open for applications.

The corona-pandemic has made it more difficult for students to find an internship. Therefore, Jönköping University (JU), Science Park Jönköping and the company Toxic Interactive Solutions (Toxic) have developed a challenge-driven, digital internship for JU students which is now open for applications.

“We already have many registered applicants for this internship and it will be exciting to follow the student groups’ development and eventually see the results,” says Linda Pålsson, Business Developer and Community Manager at Science Park Jönköping.

Due to the pandemic, more students than usual have turned to Science Park for help finding a company where they can do their internship. Internship coordinators at JU have also contacted Science Park to reach out to more companies that might be able to accept students for internships. Around the same time, Calle Andersson at Toxic contacted Science Park with an idea for a student internship. This resulted in a challenge-driven internship where 50 students will have the opportunity to solve societal challenges for the Swedish company Faktum.

The challenges can involve developing new concepts, ideas or opportunities which can develop Faktum as a company. The students will be divided into groups and will be coached by employees at Science Park and Toxic.

“We immediately felt that we wanted to be involved in creating this as we saw it as both an educational and fun way for the students to use their internship period,” says Linda Pålsson.

Toxic are a company that specializes in e-commerce and web development and have locations in Jönköping, Anderstorp and Borås. Toxic creates the internship period based on a way of working inspired by Google's Design Sprint model, where concepts are evaluated at an early stage to find out if they are worth investing in, or needs adjustment. This is to save valuable development time.

The internship, which goes by the name Co-Lab Impact Internship, starts during week 12 (which starts with Monday 22 March). After that, the groups will fill up as more students start their internship periods. The project will finish around week 19-22 with all groups presenting their results to Faktum, Toxic and Science Park.

Science Park is also working on getting more companies, in addition to Faktum, to join the Co-Lab Impact Internship with more challenges for the JU students.