Module 1 - Get Started Here

1. Introduction

Kick off the internship journey by forming a virtual company, understanding business fundamentals, and developing self-awareness as a future professional.

The AgriMocks virtual or e-internship is scheduled for 6 consecutive weeks. Each week you will meet online with your "boss", who is a real-life entrepreneur in your virtual company. You will collaborate with peers from all over the word, who act as your colleagues. You will define roles in a company and understand how teams function.

During the mentor-led sessions you will be reflecting on your personal strengths, values, and intercultural teamworking style. 

The MOOC provides you with useful background knowledge on the online platform, which you can access at your own time and convenience for self-paced learning. There you can explore the basic components of a business model and practice putting together a business model canvas. The MOOC also provides opportunities to test your knowledge and learning progress. 

By the end of this first week you should be able to navigate the virtual co-working space and use the online communication tools effectively. You  should also be able to describe how your virtual company creates, delivers, and captures value. 

We hope you will enjoy every part of your e-internship and allow yourself to discover, learn, and contribute as much as possible to the shared learning experience. Have fun!

1.1. Week 1

1.2. Learning Objectives - Week 1

2. What do you already know?

3. Keeping a Reflection Notebook

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 –1536), was a Dutch philosopher and educationalist who was a big fan of journaling as a reflection and learning tool.

Reflective journaling is not solely about recording events but understanding their significance. Instead of just passively receiving information, it encourages you to engage with the material through a structured reflective process.

Regular journaling enables you to track your intellectual and emotional progress over time, offering valuable insights into your growth and development throughout the e-internship.

Critical thinking and problem-solving are essential competencies. Reflection actively cultivates these skills by promoting a more analytical and step-by-step improvement approach to challenges.

Reflection extends beyond academic performance, playing an important role in shaping personal growth and development. In today's high-pressure environment, attributes like self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and resilience are just as critical as technical proficiency.

We therefore strongly encourage you to keep your own personal reflection notebook, in which you can journal your daily learnings, thought, questions, and so on. We will provide you with regular journaling prompts and templates.

You can keep your journal online or use a real notebook at home. Your thoughts are yours and will be kept confidential. 

3.1. Reflection Worksheet 1

3.2. Reflection Worksheet 2

3.3. Reflection Worksheet 3

4. Rules of engagement

How To Be A Great Team Member

Being a great team member involves commitment and work. Here are eight steps you can take to become an asset to your team:

1. Focus on relationship - Team work is built on trust and respect. Offer support rather than direction. 
2. Attend all online meetings - Connect between sessions to build relationships.
3. Share your experiences - Connect over similar goals and experiences.
4. Hold each other accountable - Take brief notes during your meetings of what to follow up on so you don’t forget and hold each other accountable. 
5. Coach each other; share what you learn - Offer feedback to each other to enhance learning. Share resources you’ve enjoyed, such as articles, TED talks or books. 
6. Create working groups - Organize tasks in your groups and ensure you are dependable and reliable.
7. Practice active listening - Help your team members to feel heard by listening to what they are saying and ensuring you have understood before adding what you want to say.
8. Confidentiality - Keep things that are shared in the sessions confidential. 

4.1. Working in online teams

Tips for sharing ideas in the groups
For exchange in the working groups, a forum is available to your group in each module. What you discuss there is only visible to your group (and of course to the tutors), in contrast to the main discussion forum, where contributions are visible to all course participants.

Our tips:

• It is best to work together in the forum of the respective module to keep track of everything!
• To start: The warm-up phase serves to get used to virtual group work. So work on the warm-up task together in the group to find your way into the group. The best thing to do here is to simply take the initiative and introduce yourself to the others in the group.
• In general, use the group forum for discussion and creation of task solutions. Constructive discussions on content have proven themselves to work well in the forum.
• Most group tasks are easy to divide. Coordinating this is the task of the moderator (see: Warm up task). It is important to determine what you should do what by when. Here is an exemplary procedure: The moderator divides the group: Subtask A is worked on by group A until Tuesday, subtask B is also worked on by group B until Tuesday, everyone discusses the partial solutions until Thursday, the moderator puts everything together and puts the entire group solution in the solution forum on Friday. But don't
  forget: Discuss the solutions! A "You did a great job" is not a discussion. 

4.2. How to think better

4.3. The Power of Feedback

We are often reluctant to give or receive feedback. It is usually seen as criticism. And nobody likes to be criticised, to be honest! Giving people feedback also puts us in an awkward position. We tend to 'sandwich' the critique between hyped-up positive statements to cushion the impact.

Watch the video below and find out how the right kind of feedback can improve your work!

4.4. Five-Finger-Feedback Method