The Internship Program


​At Del Lago Academy, all scholars have the unique opportunity to engage in a 6 week internship in the spring of their 11th grade year and extend this work into their 12th grade year. This internship program allows for students to give context and a real-world understanding to their learning. Alongside a mentor, our scholars realize the skills and work ethic necessary for the adult working community. 

Internships and Badges Co-created with Mentors

Scholars use digital badges to earn internships and do more intentional skill development work within the internship.  Also, scholars co-create a digital badge with their internship mentor to represent the goals they have for their project.  

Building a Co-created badge: Defining Competencies

The internship mentor and scholar co-create a digital badge together to represent the skills and knowledge required for success on their internship project.  This allows the scholar and the internship mentor to have deep conversations around how to assess what is needed for success in that specific industry.  

With their mentor, the scholar defines the competencies and the evidence required to demonstrate success.  If needed, scholars create an industry validated rubric to assess the evidence.   

Earning a Co-created badge: Evidence of Learning

During the internship, scholars continually document and reflect on their growth and learning. This typically can include notes, pictures, videos, presentations, or any other evidence that shows learning. In the practice of daily reflection and action, students can continually fine tune their work and their badge.

Scholars upload these artifacts to their digital portfolio and reflect on how they represent the agreed upon competencies for the digital badge.

Once the scholar curates the necessary quality evidence to satisfy the requirements for the badges, the industry mentor validates the evidence and the badge is issued. 

Using a Co-created badge: Workforce Development

The scholar co-created badge is open and accessible for others to earn and helps inform future applicants about the context specific work in the internship.  It serves as a recruiting tool for future internship applicants.  

Teachers, administrators, mentors and internship program organizers will be able to view scholar badge profiles to discover scholars who have the skills and interests that fit the requirements of a particular job/internship role or mentorship program.  Scholars are be able to opt-in to a messaging system that lets recruiters and hiring managers reach out to them personally with interview opportunities. 

Story of co-created digital badge process

How do performance based assessments that are designed by students in internships promote more interest based skill development?  ​

Sample Scholar Internship Badges

Below are some snapshots of the types of badges being co-created by scholars and their internship mentor.  We are working on a process to release all of these co-created badges by field.

OER Resources for Co-Created Badges