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Meaning and objectives of the professional practice course

The Polytechnic University of Jihlava (hereinafter referred to as "VŠPJ") is a public non-university university that places great emphasis on cooperation with the application sphere. A compulsory part of the curricula of all accredited bachelor's degree programmes is long-term professional practice, which distinguishes VŠPJ from other university-type colleges. The aim of the professional practice is to enable students to verify their knowledge and skills acquired by studying individual subjects of the respective field of study in practical activities in specific situations in business and public sector entities. The opportunity to practice theoretical knowledge in practice and to gain work experience already during their studies is a unique opportunity for students to increase their chances for future employment in the labour market. Students who demonstrate good knowledge, skills, moral qualities and an active approach in performing work tasks during their professional practice may even obtain permanent employment in a given organization after graduation from the VŠPJ.

The importance of the bachelor thesis in conjunction with professional practice

One of the objectives of successful completion of the professional practice is the preparation of a bachelor thesis on a topic agreed with the practice provider. The topic of the bachelor thesis should be based on problems that the organisation is addressing at the workplace where the student is completing the internship. During the daily contact with the staff of the organisation where the students carry out their professional practice, it is possible to obtain a number of essential sources, data and information to develop especially the practical part of the bachelor thesis. Such a full-fledged professional practice associated with the preparation of the bachelor thesis will significantly complement and enrich the students' knowledge and skills acquired through theoretical studies. This will ultimately help students to a large extent to successfully complete their studies at the VŠPJ and to better apply themselves on the labour market.

Basic concepts of internship:

Definition of internship

The word internship comes from Greek and refers to several interrelated concepts. In its basic sense, it refers to an established, habitual way of behaving, acting, or following some social practice, whether by an individual or a wider social group. In common parlance, the opposite of practice is the term theory. The thinker who first defined the relationship between theory and practice was Aristotle. But the word practice can also serve as a synonym for one's very particular personal experience, proficiency, skill, and ability. We will discuss this meaning of practice, but we will also use part of the first meaning, "a habitual way of behaving, acting, or going about socially." The opposite of practice in this sense, then, might be, for example, the word inexperience.

The student is prepared by the school in a sufficiently wide range of knowledge, in some subjects in sufficient detail, for the pursuit of his future profession. Even the best teachers, who use sophisticated teaching methods with the latest theoretical knowledge, are not able to prepare 100% of the student for the performance of his/her profession so that the student is experienced, proficient, and skilled. This is of course chargeable to the broad spectrum of teaching already cited, but teaching cannot do without it. So, inexperience is included in the difference to 100 %. The subject of professional practice is included in the curriculum in order to minimize the degree of inexperience of the student. For this reason, an appropriate amount of time is devoted to this subject in the programme of study.

 Formalisation

Now we need to mention part of the definition of the meaning of the word practice from the previous paragraph, "a habitual mode of conduct, action or social procedure". The student should expect to encounter customary modes of behaviour and conduct in the organisation in which he or she will undertake professional practice. Most of the time, the above is included under the term formalisation. It depends more on the size and age of the firm how it has handled formalization. It is not a rule, but larger and slightly older firms tend to be a little better in this respect. That said, a student should expect to encounter documents such as:

• Organizational Regulations
• Organizational Guidelines
• Certified management systems guidelines (ISO 9001, ISO 14001....and others)
• Orders of the Director of the organisation
• Managers' orders
• Technical documentation (design, technological...)
• Business documentation

However, it depends on the type of organization, how these documents are named and what their meaning is.

This is the notional first part of the student's professional practice, in which the student should become aware of the connection of formalization with some of the subjects studied and should be able to make a critical evaluation of it. In his/her critical evaluation, the student could also note possible informal structures and also the culture of the organisation. Similarly, the student should identify the complexity of the organization consisting of technical, social, economic and cyber subsystems and evaluate the interaction of these subsystems.

The student encounters this concept in several courses. He/she should be familiar with concepts like vision, mission, goal, strategy.....etc. However, what the student may not be familiar with during the course is the perception of these concepts and their specific content in a cross section of the entire organization. Be it managers or rank and file workers. The actual impact of strategic management and the way it is implemented should be of further interest to the student doing the professional practice.

Management

As stated above, the student is theoretically trained in a wide range of management methods for management in organizations of also a wide range. At this point, the student should realize that the process of management takes place in one plane and the real movement of the organization in another plane. During the practice, the student should get acquainted with the real movement of the organization, that is, what or what is the output of the organization (product, service...) and to whom it is provided, what are the inputs of the organization (material, cooperative, human, financial...), what is important, the ways of transforming inputs into outputs (logistics, production, service provision....). Other movements that the student should recognize in the organization is the flow of information both in the implementation level and in the managerial level, and again what is important, the flow of information between these levels. Today, information systems are used in many organizations for the generation, management of information flow and processing.

During the course of the internship, the student will perform activities in a specific job position or possibly in several job positions sequentially. At this point, the student should realize that he/she is part of a process, that is, he/she is performing the relevant operation of a particular process. The student should, especially on his/her own initiative, get to know the whole process at least in outline, but the preceding and subsequent operations in detail. It is recommended that the student work successively in several job positions for a better understanding of the processes of the organization.