Learning by Doing
Learning by Doing
With the changing work landscape, with skill specialization, new jobs and careers emerging, and greater adoption of flexible careers, finding your passions and developing skills has become extremely important. Students are realizing the benefits of having real-world experiences to discover and develop their interests. Technology has also greatly expanded the opportunities that a student has to get an enriching real-world experience. These experiences could be in the form of an internship, gap year, or specialized courses and projects in their field of interest working with mentors.
Internships
Internships are a great opportunity for students to explore potential careers in their fields of interest and to develop the necessary skills such as collaboration and problem-solving. While an internship can be extremely enriching it is difficult to find one that suits both the student and the employer. There can be differences in expectations between the two. For example, an intern may be expecting to take part in research or marketing work but can be assigned administrative work. In this case, the gains for both are very limited. This has led to the emergence of micro-internships. Micro-internships are opportunities where students are hired for a specific project with definite deliverables. Examples of micro internships include making a marketing poster or a presentation, analyzing e data, or completing a specific research project. Students are well aware of what they are signing up for and get valuable job experience in the area of interest.
Parker Dewey is a company that offers micro-internship opportunities for college students. They partner with different companies to help them find the best student talent. Companies usually are limited to the schools they hire from but joining the Parker Dewey platform helps them expand their reach greatly. Parker Dewey has been compared to a dating app for jobs. The popularity of this has increased greatly post COVID 19 with hiring freezes and the postponing of summer internships. Companies can get their work done while not committing to a formal full-time relationship. Students have been able to improve their collaboration, adaptability, problem-solving, and communication skills. 90% of students who take part in Parker Dewey internships are employed in the future compared to 64% of all college graduates. Micro internships prepare students and enhance their abilities and build the foundations for their professional careers.
Gap years
Gap years are a great opportunity for students to take a break between school and college and discover their passions and their unique contributions to the world. The idea has become more popular now due to the uncertainty in how colleges will look when they reopen again in the fall. A gap year isn’t just meant for traveling around the world, although that can, of course, be a great experience. A gap year can be used by students to engage in a large variety of experiences. This could be in the form of exploring their interests and engaging with it in the form of a project, possibly a service project around an issue which they care deeply about or an internship in their area of professional interest, or an experience living and working in a part of the world they want to learn more about. Gap years also serve as an opportunity for students to prepare themselves for college by learning different skills.
There are now companies like Year On that create a personalized gap year plan for you. Year On has an 8 months scheduled experience, a three-month abridged experience, and a three-month virtual experience. In the first 10 weeks, students travel and volunteer throughout the US. There are several choices of the area of volunteering from environment to political activism. The next 10 weeks are spent on working on a project to narrow your area of interest and developing real-world skills. The last 12 weeks are spent applying the learned skills. This could be in the form of an internship or by starting an initiative of your own. While there isn’t much concrete data on the effectiveness of a gap year, many colleges have said that they find students who have taken a gap year to be more prepared.
Specialized courses and Mentorship programs
Students who have a clear idea of their passion can take courses and further pursue these opportunities through platforms that offer specialized learning. These platforms give an idea of what such a career would look like through interactions with mentors in the same field. They also provide course work and a lot of Project-Based learning. Some schools have opportunities like this as well. My school has a career exploration section for photography where students have the opportunity to shadow a professional and create their own portfolio of school events. This has provided students great insights and helped further develop their interest and knowledge in the subject.
MyCaptian is a service that offers specific courses on a wide range of topics. Their topics range from technology-related careers to visual art. Each student is assigned a “captain” who is someone under 25 years and highly accomplished in the particular field. The captain guides the students through their exploration of the field and provides them with a sense of what a career could look like. Students go through live classes from their mentors in addition to numerous hours of recorded content. They follow a learn-apply- build model. For example, in an entrepreneurship course students are expected to come up with a business plan by the end of the course. Having a young mentor provides a valuable learning experience for the students in their field and also helps refine their thinking on how they would like to pursue it in the future.
Dewey, Parker. “Parker Dewey | Connecting Talent And Employers | Micro-Internship And Freelance Gigs For College Students”. Parkerdewey.Com, 2020,
Horn, Michael. “A Gap Year Shouldn’T Be Just For The Privileged, Especially Now”. Forbes, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2020/06/11/a-gap-year-shouldnt-be-just-for-the-privileged-especially-now/#6fc928cf450f
“How Our Micro-Internships Can Help Fill The COVID Employment Gap”. Big Think, 2020, https://bigthink.com/Charles-Koch-Foundation/parker-dewey-micro-internships?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1
Mitter, Sohini. “This IIM-B Incubated Online Mentoring Startup Doubled Enrolments After COVID-19”. Yourstory.Com, 2020, https://yourstory.com/2020/06/iim-b-incubated-online-mentoring-startup-enrollments-covid-19
Mycaptain — Learn What You Love!”. Mycaptain.In, 2020,
Year On | Gap Year And Gap Semester Programs”. Yearon.Com, 2020,
