Industrial visits helps students gain hands-on experiences

Field visits and workshops help college students gain hands-on experiences. Here’s how to find opportunities to gain valuable experiences before picking up a job.

As an integral part of the professional and management courses, several students in the first and second year are required to go on industrial visits / field trips. This industrial visits provide an insight on how companies work and also useful information related to the course which cannot be completely visualized in lectures.

Industry visits play an important role in the College education programme of several institutions. Students are taken for industry visits where they interact with the company people and have a first-hand experience of how a corporate entity actually works. The crucial purpose behind this programme is to accustom students to the industrial practices and the workings of the corporate world. Students are exposed to practical situations and events in companies thereby honing their corporate skills and industry understanding.

The industrial visit provides students the opportunity to learn through observation. The day the students spent attending the industrial visit is enjoyable and also very useful.

A typical industrial visit is a study tour that is crafted entirely based on the student’s curriculum. At the visit, the students get to interact with corporate delegates who are on-the-job and actually see what they can expect in a work environment. This ensures that the student gets enough time to soak in all that he sees, as well as, leaves him rested for the next day.

In foreign countries, industrial visits are used as platforms to provide exposure to students. While the visits in Europe are aimed at helping students get a clear idea about the organization’s departments and real life functioning and were seen to lead to better hiring and, eventually, employee retention; back home in India, these are more of formalities which ‘have to be complied with’. Industrial visits help students shape their future by allowing them to make more sensible career choices.

When it comes to industrial visits, more holistic interactions between the students and the industry is necessary. Colleges should enrich their students with experiential learning, work culture immersion and help students gain a better picture of a potential career path.

There are companies that help students connect with industry partners for field visits, workshops and helps them gain hands-on experiences. According to a report by KPMG, the education sector in India has been an area of global interest.