This study investigated how student effort and the course design influenced an online internship in China. A cohort of 95 postgraduate students became distance learners in a credit-bearing internship course due to COVID-19. The course leader applied the action learning framework to prompt student online collaboration and group inquiry. The framework assumes the importance of self-reliant learner autonomy in virtual internships. After the course, researchers analyzed the effects of self-directed learning with technology on a multidimensional community of inquiry in a virtual environment. The study also identified students' narratives that explain how self-directed learning with technology interacted with three elements of virtual communities of inquiry: social, cognitive, and teaching. Findings explain how virtual internships can be facilitated through a community of inquiry model. Educators and practitioners may consider the model to demonstrate student-staff partnerships (Fitzgerald et al., 2020) to achieve quality transformation of internships from face-to-face mode to distance education.