Internship experiences in vocational education are essential to professional development. The transition from the school or university to the job market is a potentially conflicting task, which can represent a crisis related to the professional choice, as it requires a range of choices regarding possible professional routes. The quality of this transition will largely depend on students’ own involvement with their education and on the development of competencies that are useful to the labor world.

Internships may be during the time at school or university (as “curricular internship”), or they may have just finished education and be entering the labour market for the first time. Internships vary in duration (as “extra-curricular internship). They can be part-time or full-time, paid or unpaid. The prime purpose of internships is to provide interns with a meaningful experience that enhances their employability and skills

This guide aims to analyze the evolution of traineeships in a global system (international internships) and in a high-tech system that allows not having to be physically present in the workplace (virtual placements) and to increase the opportunity to meet students and companies.

The particularity of such traineeships will therefore be that of adapting the use of technologies the procedures already known for the realization of traditional traineeships as well as the contents and expectations in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities that the trainee can increase at the end of the experience.

The virtual and international internships will be analyzed taking into account the constraints that they have in terms of possible educational content, excluding all the training activities that force the presence in the company for example in the production department, while the training projects focusing on activities will be privileged.

The European Commission has tasked the Public Policy and Management Institute and Youth Policy Labs with exploring the feasibility of Erasmus+ virtual youth exchanges. Virtual exchanges complement physical exchange programmes by offering young people online access to some of the same benefits.