Published on
Susanna Martin
Research Intern
Category:
Reading time:
10
Find out about the reasons why edyoucated is the perfect company to join for (not only) an internship in research and data analytics.
Hey there!
My name is Susanna and for the last months I supported edyoucated as a research & data analytics intern. It was a great experience and I can only recommend joining edyoucated! If you’re hesitating, here are the three main reasons why edyoucated is the perfect company for doing (not only) an internship.
The most special about the Research internship - at least for me - was the variety of different tasks and projects I got to work on. Data science is an interdisciplinary field with many diverse topics and I, for my part, wanted to gain insight into as many different areas as possible. During my internship, my projects varied from technical tasks to more creative activities and web research.
A little learning: I can highly recommend to work at least two parallel projects for some daily variety!
Personally, I love programming with Python, and luckily I had a lot of possibilities to do so in my projects. As a nice side effect I got to learn a lot about commenting and structuring my code better.
I tested the integration of a few APIs (e.g. YouTube) and wrote code to analyze and process their results. Sometimes I did a comparison of different platforms, other times I tested whether a future integration of the API into an edyoucated feature might make sense.
A huge project was programming and testing a recommender system inspired by nearest neighbor algorithms. This was probably my biggest and longest project, but a lot of fun! It was also much discussed and talked about afterwards, and is soon going to be integrated into the learning platform.
For sharing our code and collaborating with each other, we use the GitHub, which also gave me the opportunity to see what others are writing and working on.
To analyze and visualize data I used Metabase, a new dashboarding tool which has a lot of integrated, low-code functionality to process data. For more complicated analyses, I wrote my own SQL queries. The tool makes it pretty easy to play around with visualization options like pie charts, bar charts or map charts, but also progresses and trends.
I had a lot of fun creating and designing dashboards, infographics and single analyses for specific business or research questions. 🎨 Some of those are also going to be used for marketing purposes.
Another creative task was writing blog posts, which the research team uses to regularly publish their research results on the website.
For nearly every project, some web research was necessary. 🔍 Sometimes only as groundwork, but sometimes also to get results. For example, finding new funding opportunities or identifying new marketing outlets for research activities. Yes, also research wants to be seen! 🙂 Even if web research is not the most difficult job to do, it’s really relevant to know how to get the necessary information as fast as possible.
Most important: Concentrate on the real problem and don’t get distracted by incidental questions!
For all projects, one final task always stays the same: The documentation of the project in a comprehensible form. This is very important as it is used to assess the outcome of the projects, to evaluate the business use-case behind them and see whether and how the results can be used and implemented.
I don’t know how you think about it but, for me, a good working atmosphere is key to feel comfortable and motivated to deliver good results. At edyoucated, everybody is integrated in an open and inclusive way. The three main reasons for that are the integration of interns, the open company culture and the company-employee relationship based on trust.
One of the most important things is how you’re treated as an intern. Unfortunately, in earlier internships, I often experienced a feeling of being “only” an intern and therefore only being good enough for easy or annoying tasks a regular employee had no time for. Also, most new projects were just assigned without the possibility to have a say in it.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
At edyoucated, the opposite was the case! Since day one I was enabled and encouraged to say no, to decide on my own tasks and to improve my own skills. I was never “just” an intern, but always treated as a full and valuable member of the team.
Another important aspect of working culture is the constant effort to improve. This applies to the company goals as well as to every single employee at edyoucated. Everybody is open and willing to change for the better.
Feedback is one of the key elements to improve, and it’s highly valued to express honest and useful critique - both positive and negative. At edyoucated it’s called a “culture of feedback loops and transparency”, and it’s not only a phrase but exactly what happens. Everything is communicated in an open and transparent fashion, and for many decisions the whole team is invited to take part and have a say in it.
Being at the start of my working career it was great to see how a real feedback culture can work.
Edyoucated has been a remote business from the beginning. Most meetings take place in video calls and the internal communication runs via Slack. This could lead to an urge of controlling the working times of the employees in tracking tools or similar things. But at edyoucated trust is the chosen option.
Every employee - including interns - is trusted to fill their working hours and to do a good job. There are no core working times and, except for some fixed meetings everybody gets the chance to work whenever they can work and concentrate best.
For me, the possibility of a flexible day planning was very motivating.
A reallly nice side effect was that I had the chance to go out in daylight everyday even in the darker winter months. I was thankful for the sunlight ☀️ and my dog thankful for the extensive walks we were able to do 🐶.
Last but not least, my co-workers had a huge impact on the quality of my internship.
I worked very independently on my projects. But this doesn’t mean I worked alone all the time, without the opportunity to see and talk to others. Every intern has a main supervisor, but also the whole edyoucated team and especially the other interns and working students to exchange ideas, stories and a good laugh.
My supervisor was Julian who is responsible for the field of research and data science. He has been my contact person for everything. At least once a week (more often if necessary) we had a “Check-In” to check my current status and whether I needed support, ideas, tips or help in any way. Also new projects were discussed and assessed.
These calls were always fun not only because of the used tool Gather Town. This is an amazing platform in which our development team built their offices remotely to create a more office like working atmosphere and where everybody walks around as a customized avatar.
Fun fact: An alternative to walking around in Gather are the carts which are a fun addition and can be used for a small race or to crash a meeting. 😈
Of course, Julian was not the only one I stood in contact with. In regular meetings, the whole company comes together. For example, in the “Weekly” the whole company meets to get updated on the latest developments of every department. We also have a weekly “Wins Celebration” in which whoever feels like it can share their achievements of the week, both professional and personal.
Of course, everybody also has department-specific meetings. In my case, I had a two-weekly “Research Retrospective” in which the research team meets to present and discuss the current projects. Or the monthly “Exchange Product & Research” in which the current projects are presented and discussed on how to integrate the result into the product.
And there are many more opportunities to get to meet and to know other colleagues. Examples are remote lunch, meditation sessions, team socials or individual coffee calls. A very special event was the “Remote Christmas Party”. We cooked together and played a really fun game. And everybody wore at least one small Christmas item! 🙂
For a better start, every new joining intern (and working student) gets assigned a buddy who supports the first steps and gives all the answers one might have in the first days.
At edyoucated there is quite a number of working students and other interns. We have an own slack channel to enable exchange and a better connection. Each time a new working student or intern joins the company, a meeting for all other students is organized to get to know the newest member. The new-joiner gets introduced and can tell a bit about him- or herself, and little games are played which include some personal stories about the others in the meeting.
All in all I had a really great time at edyoucated. Not only did I work on a wide range of projects and was able to apply and improve my skills. I also got to meet many amazing people who are all super nice, open-minded and happy to integrate new-joiners into their processes. 💚 On top of that I also had the chance to experience a real start-up feeling including free time management and trustful interactions.
In the end, my internship was a huge success, and I got to develop on both at professional and at personal level!
edyoucated is funded by leading research institutions such as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
