Developing and Evaluating a New OJT Feedback Form: Evidence from a Mixed-Methods Assessment of Internship Quality and Assessment Continuity

A Philippine university recently transitioned from a 10-item OJT feedback instrument to a newly developed multidimensional OJT evaluation form designed to enhance internship assessment and quality assurance. The last cohort of student-trainees evaluated with the old instrument: 25 Computer Studies student-trainees, 8 BSCS, 17 BSIT deployed to 10 host organizations in Region XII in Summer 2025, serves as a baseline to assess the quality of the OJT program and the implications of this instrument change. The study provides a quantitative benchmark and structural gaps in the new form using descriptive statistics, independent samples t-testing, Cronbach's alpha reliability analysis, and reflexive thematic analysis of the open-ended responses. The pre-existing instrument produced a grand mean of M = 4.63 (SD = 0.61), with scores of Supervision & Mentorship and Workplace Environment obtaining the highest scores (both M = 4.72). The item in which training duration adequacy was rated the lowest (M = 4.24, SD = 0.97) and the only one showing a statistically significant program difference was rated significantly lower by the BSCS students compared to the BSIT students (M = 3.50 vs. 4.59; t(23) = −3.03, p = .006, d = −1.30, a large effect). This finding was further reinforced by four qualitative themes: unfamiliar workplace technologies, non-existent deployment planning, delays to resource access, and organizational constraints.

Most importantly, the revised New OJT Feedback Form instrument does not include training duration adequacy, which was the construct with the greatest policy relevance, and does not have a holistic single item structure as did the old instrument that allowed direct ten dimension profiling. The study sets a baseline for future assessment and shows that the New OJT Feedback Form represents a major institutional innovation, provides greater construct coverage, provides better qualitative feedback mechanisms and provides better support for quality assurance and program evaluation.  A key contribution of the study is the development of a revised multidimensional OJT Feedback Form designed to support internship evaluation, quality assurance, and evidence-based program improvement in computing education. The study suggests that the training duration subscale be restored, that the anchors of the program comparability subscale remain the same, and that a pilot study be conducted using the revised instrument to see how well it performs against the baseline before fully implementing the instrument in institutions.