Summary
- What are educational excursions?
- Significance and importance of excursions for students
Educational excursions or tours are short trips by students, under the supervision of the school management. Students are taken to a place away from their usual routine environment.
The main aim of education is to impart knowledge. Imparting knowledge through a hands-on experience is one of the ways of making learning more interesting.
There are different methods through which schools and colleges try to deliver academic concepts. One of the most effective methods is by conducting educational tours.
Schools nowadays have made educational tours a part of their curriculum thereby making studying fascinating and engrossing.
The importance of educational excursions in schools is manifold. Here we have jotted down a comprehensive list of the benefits of school excursions. Though the list is not exhaustive, the key advantages are listed below.
Importance of Excursions for Students
1. Practical Knowledge Is Better than Bookish Knowledge
According to a research article conducted and published in the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, about 65% of students prefer visual learning aids.
These learners prefer to see how to do things rather than just talk about them. They prefer to watch demonstrations rather than sit through a lecture.
True to the famous phrase ‘seeing is believing’, your perspective changes when you see something in person.
For example, learning about a historical monument by actually visiting the site gives you a better insight than reading about it through text.
Educational excursions help students to grasp concepts through visual learning.
2. Stress Buster
Students are confined to the four walls of a classroom for most of their day. The drudgery and the monotony of the four walls can lead to a stressful learning experience.
However, educational trips organised by schools serve as a miracle stress buster. The very announcement of a school excursion gets students excited and enlivened.
Educational trips relax students who are otherwise anxious in a competitive classroom environment. It serves as a break from the normal routine of a usual day in school.
3. Builds Corporate Attitude
Educational tours build corporate attitudes amongst the students. Students taken on tours to corporate offices and industries will be exposed to the current employees in the sector.
This kind of exposure introduces them to the actions, conduct and practices of the employees.
Usually, these practices are formal and official which is a stark contrast to the informal behaviour and mannerisms of a college student.
Being exposed to the corporate attitude can give students an insight into the corporate attitude which they may have to adopt in the future.
4. Interactive Sessions
One of the main benefits of school excursions is the interactive sessions during these trips. Such field trips allow students to freely interact with friends, teachers, and others.
Educational excursions usually involve the interaction of a third person who is not a teacher or not part of the school management. This gives students a bit of liberty to interact with these new contacts.
For example, a trip to a science centre or a museum involves the interaction of students with the curator or guide of the museum.
5. Discipline
Teachers often expect the students to be on their best behaviour when on a field trip. Students follow these instructions well, as they are aware that their behaviour will reflect on their school.
So educational trips indirectly teach students discipline and control.
6. Added Information
Visiting a site often results in the transfer of new information. At times, certain data is not included in a textbook. Such omitted data can be directly gained from the excursion venue.
Further, experts can add more valuable and practical information to students during live interactive sessions.
For example, a doctor or hospital manager can explain a concept missing from the textbook during an educational trip to the local hospital.
A sales representative can elucidate details on sales invoices during an educational excursion to the supermarket.
It helps to get more exposure to any topic. Apart from textbook information, educational tours can add more exposure to any subject. It dives deeper into the topic than what is taught inside the classrooms.
7. Academic Augmentation
One of the importance of Educational excursions is the boost it gives to concepts learned in the classroom. A teacher can reinforce basic concepts by arranging an excursion to the topic related site.
For example, management students learning about human resources and employee management can be taken on an excursion to a factory or a company.
This gives students an enhanced learning experience on how resources are managed in factories and companies.
This also improves academic performance of students. A student exposed to educational tours has more practical knowledge.
Being able to transfer this practical knowledge on to paper during examinations can give you a better chance of scoring higher grades.
Students not exposed to excursions and educational tours will have only bookish knowledge and may just simply try to reproduce what the text book claims.
8. Opportunity
Educational excursions organised by schools allow students to travel to these new sites. It also provides the less fortunate students an opportunity to travel to these places without incurring much expenses.
9. Knowledge Organisation Is Better in A Naturalistic Learning Experience
Research conducted and published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology concluded that the organization of knowledge is crucially important for many cognitive processes.
The current study investigated whether naturalistic learning experiences can drive rapid measurable changes in children.
An investigation on the effects of a week-long zoo summer camp (compared with a control school-based camp) on the degree to which 4- to 9-year-old children’s knowledge about animals was organized.
These findings provide novel evidence that naturalistic experiences can drive rapid changes in knowledge organization.
10. More Memory Power Through Hands-On Experiences
Seeing, touching, and live experience of an academic concept enhances memory power.
According to the findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science, exploring objects through touch can generate detailed, durable memories for those objects.
11. Better Perspective
Travelling often involves new situations, new people, and new adventures. Some educational excursions are organised to a different state or country.
Such excursions introduce students to a whole new world. A world they might not have seen or encountered.
Therefore, field trips enhance students’ outlook and help them to gain a fresh perspective of the world around them.
12. Educational Excursions Make Students Curious
One of the benefits of excursions is that these educational trips make students curious and thirsty for more knowledge on the topic.
Students are eager to learn and see what they have learned in the classroom through textbooks.
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13. A Fun Time with Friends
Excursions are a fun-filled time with classmates and peers. Students enjoy interacting with friends outside of the school campus. It increases the bond between classmates and allows them to interact freely with each other.
14. A Unique Learning Environment
Educational excursions provide a unique and informal way of learning. It provides a break from the usual desk and chair learning method.
Excursions to open spaces like zoos and botanical gardens and parks provide a natural learning environment. Such natural surroundings provide a casual and relaxed method of studying.
15. Opens a Window of Opportunity
Another importance of excursions for students is that this exposure opens up a window of opportunity when it comes to careers and choices.
During interactive sessions on educational excursions, students talk to different people from varied fields. In classrooms, student’s knowledge of the outside world is limited. This also helps in improving the art of communication in students.
Excursions introduce students to other professions other than the ones introduced behind closed doors of a classroom.
16. Two-Step Learning Process
One of the importance of excursions in schools is that it involves a beneficial two-step process.
Step 1: It is the first step where teachers usually research on the excursion site before taking students. Teachers prepare themselves well to supplement the practical knowledge with facts, figures, and additional information on the place of visit.
Step 2: It involves the knowledge enhancement for students in terms of the feel and live experience of education. These trips contribute to better academic performances for students.
Therefore, educational excursion benefits both teachers and students, making them more adaptable to new learning methods. This in turn enhances the popularity of the school.
Including educational excursions and trips in schools has become part of the curriculum in many parts of the country.
Conclusion
Due to the innumerable benefits of educational excursions, the modern educational system has included excursions and trips as part of the school curriculum in many parts of the country.
Students are given a hands-on learning experience on these trips, thereby providing a holistic approach to education.
The time has now come to include educational tours and excursions in the curriculum. Modern industries today warrant the need for educational institutions to compulsorily include excursions in the syllabus.
This practical exposure encourages students to perform better and score higher grades. It provides an all round development of students which is the main aim of today’s education.
Including educational excursions in the curriculum will guarantee a holistic approach for students.
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