An experiment in blended career development: The University of Derby’s social media internship programme

Abstract

It is possible to describe the capability of an individual to use the online environment to pursue their career as their digital career literacy. It is comprised of a range of different skills including the ability to: search; evaluate resources; communicate; network with other people; develop your reputation; and utilise an ever growing range of tools and environments as part of your career building. In another article in this edition of the NICEC journal Hooley (2012) has defined digital career literacy as encompassing changing, collecting, critiquing, connecting, communicating, creating and curating. This requires both the translation of offline skills and the development of new online ones. This article sets out the experience of running the social media internship programme (SMIP), an intervention to develop students’ digital career literacy at the University of Derby.