Perspectives on the quality of practice programs in higher economic education

As internships become increasingly used as learning tools for students, to help bridge the gap between classroom learning and business practice, it is important to understand what determines the quality of these experiences. An indicator of a successful internship is the satisfaction of students, but also of other relevant actors, such as companies or academic tutors.

The study has several dimensions of innovation and originality; first, it tracks the quality of internships from multiple perspectives, by simultaneously identifying the perceptions of three categories of relevant actors (students, companies and academia); secondly, it identifies the role of modern learning methods with digital support, such as gamification (the use of game mechanics and game design elements in the teaching-learning-evaluation process), in increasing engagement in the learning process; thirdly, it implements different quantitative methods on primary data, collected on the basis of questionnaires adapted to the purpose of the research; presents a bibliometric study carried out in two prestigious databases, WoS and Scopus; not lastly, based on the results obtained, the study offers useful recommendations to decision-makers from the business and academic environment, aimed at improving the quality of internships.