This research full paper presents a literature review that seeks to answer: What is the role of Service-Learning Internships (SLI) in developing professional skills in students as future engineers? This is because SLI has been pervasively included in the formation of engineering students. More specifically, this review aims to answer: What is the theoretical base of service-learning (SL) experiences? How are internships organized within the engineering programs? What kind of activities are performed? What are the more common learning outcomes and how are they assessed? Where are the SLI activities performed? and; Which are stakeholders for SLI? The articles reviewed in this study were selected from the Web of Science Database. The PRISMA methodology was used to identify, screen, evaluate eligibility, and include the relevant articles for the review. A total of 2969 journal articles and proceeding papers, in English and Spanish, from 2000 to 2023, were screened with the inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in 18 articles that were analyzed. The studies analyzed reveal that the main role of SLI is to train students to address and solve real-world problems, applying their technical knowledge, and as a result, students tend to improve their critical thinking and analytical skills, their social responsibility, and citizen engagement, among other benefits. This is considered important since it relates to their readiness for competent professional practice in a constantly changing labor market. The studies connect the improvement of skills to Robert Bringle's SL experiences, Kolb's experiential learning and John Dewey's experimentalism. The characteristics of the practices and the activities performed differ according to the specific areas of the engineering programs. SL experiences are usually integrated into the programs' curricula, but not always as internships. Regarding location, SLIs are conducted in diverse settings, including university campuses, schools, online platforms, and mostly in community-based environments. The learning outcomes differ from knowledge areas and half of the experiences and the assessment methods vary, with self-assessment via questionnaires being the most prevalent, followed by content assessment and instructor evaluation through written reports. The stakeholders include schools and high schools, non-government organizations, and different spaces from society such as farms, museums or recreation parks. This review contributes to recognizing the role of SLI in fostering professional skills. It provides valuable insights into the perception of students, lecturers and community stakeholders regarding the university's involvement in addressing real-world challenges. The results establish the necessity of refining assessment methods for professional skills since most of them rely on self-assessment and activity reports, and also offer the opportunity to explore the correlation between instructorevaluated skill development and the practical application of technical knowledge in real-world settings.

Technical and vocational secondary school students take internships in enterprises as part of their training. As such, they are often confronted with hazardous situations, such as contact with chemical substances, operating specialist machinery or in potentially dangerous working conditions. Students therefore need to be prepared in the school setting, prior to their internship experience. To address this challenge an immersive virtual reality serious game was developed. Students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the game were assessed using a survey. Targeted variables were presence, design, interest and usefulness. Students positively evaluated all measures, suggesting an immersive virtual reality serious game is a useful instrument in teaching hazard perception in technical and vocational secondary education.

The increasing popularity of social networking sites has been a source of many privacy concerns. To mitigate these concerns and empower users, different forms of educational and technological solutions have been developed. Developing and evaluating such solutions, however, cannot be considered a neutral process. Instead, it is socially bound and interwoven with norms and values of the researchers. In this contribution, we aim to make the research process and development of privacy solutions more transparent by highlighting questions that should be considered. (1) Which actors are involved in formulating the privacy problem? (2) Is privacy perceived as a human right or as a property right on one’s data? (3) Is informing users of privacy dangers always a good thing? (4) Do we want to influence users’ attitudes and behaviours? (5) Who is the target audience? We argue that these questions can help researchers to better comprehend their own perspective on privacy, that of others, and the influence of the solutions they are developing. In the discussion, we propose a procedure called ‘tool clinics’ for further practical implementations.

The research reported in the current article studies the impact of learning in asynchronous discussion groups on students' final exam scores and levels of knowledge construction. Multilevel analyses were applied to uncover the specific influence of student, group and task variables. The results indicate that the impact of student characteristics on both dependent variables is of higher significance than characteristics of the discussion group students are allocated to. With regard to levels of knowledge construction, task characteristics also appear to be of importance. With regard to final exam scores the analyses reveal a significant impact from student learning style, attitude towards task-based learning, the number of student contributions and the level of knowledge construction in these contributions. No significant group characteristics were observed. As to levels of knowledge construction, the analyses revealed that the amount of contributions and the attitude towards the online learning environment are significant predictors. The intensity of the interaction in a group had a significant impact. As to task characteristics, significant differences were found between consecutive themes. These disappeared when taking into account task complexity.