Engineering students of Jadavpur University will do their summer internship online because of the lockdown.

The aspiring engineers will get a taste of work from home before they get familiar with the real grime on the shop floor.

Internships offer students with an opportunity to apply the knowledge learned in the classroom to real-life situations, said an official of the university’s placement cell. “It also helps in building a network,” he said.

At JU, the third-year students take part in internship programmes that start in the third week of May and continue for four to eight weeks.

Is doing internship from home same as hitting the ground?

“The students will at least be exposed to some sort of problems that the industry will ask them to solve. This will be partly beneficial, something that we could look for under the circumstances,” said Anupam Basu, the director of NIT Durgapur and a professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Kharagpur.

At his institute, Basu, a former student of Jadavpur University, has introduced this model of internship from home in the wake of the lockdown.

“In some cases, the company is sending problems to the students. Our teachers, who have worked as consultants with the industry, is giving students assignment to solve,” said Basu.

At JU, the eligible candidates go to the companies such as Amazon, Flipkart and PwC for the internship.

Asked what could be the structure of internship from home, a senior representative of a company said they were evolving a model and would soon update the students concerned.

“It could be that we would share with the students data of our earlier marketing strategy. The students will be asked to determine what is going to be the forecasting model based on a study of artificial intelligence (AI),” he said.

The internship starts after the completion of the sixth-semester exams.

“Given the prevalent crisis, the campuses in Bengal would reopen only after June 10. No one knows when the students could start going to the shop floors, which are now shut because of the lockdown. Therefore, we have convinced the companies to start the internship from home,” said Chiranjib Bhattacharjee, a pro-vice-chancellor of JU.

The internship is a must because when the engineering students appear in job interview, prospective employers ask whether the candidate has done internship.

“As the exam cannot be held till June 10, we thought of keeping the students engaged by letting them attend internship by working from home,” said a university official.

Around 70 per cent out of 1,240 students in the engineering faculty participate in the internship.

Pro-VC Bhattacharya said the internship would begin on April 27 at the earliest.

He said there were certain types of internships that cannot be done by working from home. For those students, the university is thinking of winter internships.

“We cannot ask a student who is due to intern at Haldia Petrochemicals or refinery to join the internship from home. For them, visiting the plant is a must. We are planning a winter internship for them,” he said.

Another official said the placement drive of about 150-odd fourth-year students could not be completed because of the closure forced by the lockdown.

“Around 72 per cent students have got job offers. For the rest, we are planning a special placement drive from July. This depends on response from companies,” the official said.