Documenting and characterizing interactions between student interns and their mentors in the workplace offers perspective on student learning and enculturation that can help us introduce these ways of learning to students in the technical communication classroom, even before the internship. Three student intern conversations in the internship setting are the focus of this close discourse analysis, framed by 6-month-long case studies and Vygotsky’s learning theory. Results indicate that many similarities exist between classroom feedback and mentor feedback in the internship, but that differences in student agency may make negotiation important in the technical communication classroom.

This article offers empirical data to explore ways that both industry mentors and academic internship coordinators support student interns in ways that optimize the workplace experience. Rich description of qualitative data from case studies and interviews shows that to optimize the internship, both the industry mentor and the academic internship coordinator ensure that the experience offers professional-level experiences while allowing students to make mistakes in the course of the learning experience. Finally, academic internship coordinators find it most effective to spend time selecting strong industry mentors, and then cultivating these relationships across years of internship interactions.