Externship
Encyclopedia
Externships are experiential learning
Experiential learning
Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience. Simply put, Experiential Learning is learning from experience. The experience can be staged or left open. Aristotle once said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." David A...

 opportunities, similar to intern
Intern
Internship is a system of onthejob training for white-collar jobs, similar to an apprenticeship. Interns are usually college or university students, but they can also be high school students or post graduate adults seeking skills for a new career. They may also be as young as middle school or in...

ships, offered by educational institutions to give students short practical experiences in their field of study. In medicine it may refer to a visiting physician who is not part of the regular staff. It is derived from Latin externus and from Old English scipe.

Though the practice of externship dates back to the medieval Bimaristan
Bimaristan
Bimaristan is a Persian word meaning hospital, with Bimar- from Middle Persian of vīmār or vemār, meaning "sick" plus -stan as location and place suffix...

 hospitals, the term externship has a first known use date of 1945 in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Externships are generally shorter than internships and last for approximately two days to a few weeks.

Advantages

Since externships are less extensive than internships, they are not usually given any academic credit. Due to the short duration, externships can be easily completed during a student’s spring and summer breaks or even during a January interim. Externships can be viewed as job shadowing, since externs are closely supervised by employee volunteers who agree to walk them through day-to-day routines at the company or organization. The experience allows students to apply their coursework learning to a real life setting. Externships offer samples of career
Career
Career is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's "course or progress through life ". It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work ....

 possibilities. It is a chance for students to observe and ask questions. They can be viewed as external studies which combine classroom knowledge with real-world experience. This knowledge prepares students for the transition from school to career
Career
Career is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a person's "course or progress through life ". It is usually considered to pertain to remunerative work ....

.

Externships can lead to opportunities after students complete their studies. They can help pre-graduates get their foot in the door for possible job opening or even make them better candidates for aggressive internship opportunities. The goal of an extern is to become familiar with new professions and job fields. Externships are also a source of networking contacts once a profession
Profession
A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....

 is chosen.

Externships are not only conducted for the benefit of the extern, but for the host as well. Both parties get a chance to observe one another. Successful externships could lead to recruitment
Recruitment
Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...

possibilities which would be based on a thoroughly informed decision.

In legal profession

In the legal profession, the terms externship and internship are used interchangeably. Neither is shorter, both may be for credit.

External links

  • http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IJN/is_2000_Dec/ai_68742422
  • http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4080/is_200403/ai_n9350239
  • http://career.uark.edu/Students/Externships.aspx
  • http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/030403/externships.shtml
  • http://www.law.umich.edu/curriculum/externshipsandindependentstudy/Pages/default.aspx
  • http://career.berkeley.edu/Article/041022b-js.stm
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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