Virtual vs In-Person Short Experiences Abroad

We all know that extra-curricular experience is highly valued when looking at your future career. Gaining experience in your chosen area helps you gain relevant skills through expanding your knowledge and getting hands on opportunities; and this gives you an advantage over other people who may not have had the same experiences. Examples of extra-curricular experiences include internships, volunteering or studying outside of University - and all of these will provide a unique appeal to different employers.

One thing that appeals to a lot of students is carrying out these experiences abroad. It is easy to impress people by showing that you are comfortable to be independant and search for these experiences in other places, that you are skilled with cross-cultural communication and already have/are able to make connections across the globe. You also get to travel and experience other countries without just being a tourist, and through this you can often learn more than you would by just visiting. One of the other advantages is that these experiences can help your personal growth - by providing a new perspective on life and even your career. A lot of people who have undertaken international experiences come back with a new-outlook.

However, due to Coronavirus, many students had and still continue to have international plans disrupted due to travel restrictions. Because of this, having international focused experiences can seem like a thing of the past - and it can seem much easier to just find a local alternative as we don't know when the effects of the pandemic will start to ease. But some places that previously offered experiences abroad have started to explore other options. in order to fill this gap. The idea of virtual volunteering or studying became popular due to the ease of connecting through Zoom, and many organisations have used this in order to offer students a way to still have an international aspect to their plans.

One company who has done this is Think Pacific - a volunteer based organisation that has helped the communities in Fiji for years. Usually every year the organisation sends hundreds of students to Fiji to help on smaller remote islands - focusing on education and sports. Yet, due to Covid-19, these trips were not able to happen in 2020. In order to still provide for the people of Fiji, Think Pacific decided to create 'virtual internships' that people could participate in. This allowed them to continue donating money to on-going projects whilst helping out local businesses. I decided to apply for the first set of these virtual internships in the summer of 2020, and was chosen to complete a marketing action project alongside learning about Fijian culture.

I was also lucky enough to get the opportunity to complete a 4-week summer school in China in 2019 as an extra certificate alongside my university studies. I independantly travelled to Shanghai where I took classes every week-day around sustainability and design and got to explore the city and some outskirts on the weekends.

Because I have taken part in both a virtual and a real-life extra-curricular experience with an international focus, I felt like I would be able to provide a summary of some of the benefits and weaknesses of each one. If you are thinking of applying to one or both of these options, or just want to hear a little more about the opportunities virtual experiences can provide - hopefully hearing about them both will allow you to make a decision that will suit you!

1. Immersion: of course when I went to Shanghai, I got to immerse myself within the culture and country I was in through the food, the people and all the places that I got to visit whilst I was there. It was a complete culture shock for me due to the vast difference between China and the UK (I think more than I expected, despite being told!) however I did enjoy bits of it, especially meeting new people from all over the world and forming friendships I still have to this day. You are able to form connections much more easily in person, and I think this is the number one reason for travelling to take part in an extra-curricular experience and one of the reasons I will in the future! Travelling around the city was also a lot of fun, however it's not a huge cultural hub (Shanghai is very industrial) and therefore we did run out of things to do in the end. If you're going somewhere with a lot of history or somewhere very beautiful, I think this would definitely impact how immersed you would want to be in the actual area around you and it might be a different story.

As I said however, I did get bored of it by the end, and just wanted to go home - and I think this is actually one of the advantages of virtual experiences with an international focus. With Think Pacific, I was still able to learn about Fijian culture and customs through their live sessions and my own research - and I never even had to leave my room. This can be an influential factor for some people who start to miss home quickly and if you're worried about travelling too far for too long, this could definitely be an option for you. Of course, I would have loved to actually experienced Fiji's weather and beaches and got to meet the people, but I don't think it took too much away from the overall goal of that particular internship.

2. Hands-On: This would be the one category that the virtual option quite obviously falls behind in. When you are sat behind a screen, there isn't that much actual hands-on experience you can get involved with. One main task we had for the internships was to create an action project based around a local organisation that we chose within Fiji - I went with womens charity Graduate Women Fiji. I had to create a 6-month social media plan for them; I was able to do this by doing research on the organisation and studying similar organisations social media platforms (and it was highly beneficial I had a task based around online presence). However, it sometimes felt difficult to engage with the task. I often had areas I wanted to get opinions on, and with only 2 mentor meeting opportunities and no contact with the organisation themselves, I couldn't really get anything back. I would have liked to have spent time with individuals from GWF and found out more personably about their goals and values and the cultural impact itself, but I had to deal with independent judgement instead.

With the in-person experience, I got so much opportunity for hands-on learning. We took trips to factories, museums, shops, and other places that had an impact on the overall outcome. We had teachers that specialised in all aspects of clothing production and sustainability talk to us that had travelled from around the world, we had industry lectures and learnt Chinese from people who could interact and help us. Our final project was done in teams as a collaborative effort, and it was an amazing way to learn! I definitely would have to give the hands-on learning to in-person experience (but that isn't a surprise, so lets move on!)

3. Skills: I think that in relation to skills learnt, both virtual and in-person rank about the same. Due to the fact that one was an internship and one was a summer school, it is hard to compare directly here, as one was academic and one was work based. Yet, I do generally feel I left both more confident in the areas focused on throughout. In-person, I had the chance to develop my cross-cultural communication skills and also got to try out a new language (even though I only remember a limited amount, it was still fun to try a new skill) as well as developing my design skills through my final project and also working on travel based anxieties I had of flying across the globe by myself! I feel like a developed a whole range of new skills and I definitely got a lot more than just academic knowledge from the experience.

For the virtual experience, I think I also learnt some new skills. I had to still work on cross-cultural communication skills due to interatcing with others online from all over the world (just in a slightly different way), it also helped me develop how I view other places I have never been to before - often we feel we can't really connect to a culture we haven't properly visited, however I left feeling a connection to Fijian customs that I would never have had the chance to learn had it not been for the internship. I also got to develop some skills related to my future career, such as analysis and creating a strategy for a companies future.

4. Overall Mindset: In terms of overall mindset, virtual definietly does not have the same impact as a lived experience. There were people we had talking about how their trip to Fiji to meet the local people changed them completely, and this made for a bit of an anti-climatic end session for our virtual internship. I believe that Think Pacific did try their best to give us this personable feel to the experience through culture sessions and talks with Fijian individuals, however it doesn't compare to the real thing.

With Shanghai, I came away almost an entirely new person (at least fashion wise!) and I think it really changed my opinion on a few things about England that I had taken advantage of before. Before that trip, I had only really been abroad for a week at a time, and by the end of most I was always ready to go home, so I didn't really think about how 4 weeks would feel. I think a lesson it taught me is that I couldn't just move to a country that I had no previous attachment to as I would then feel like I was missing something, instead I would have to find a place that I identified with and take trips before even thinking of doing anything more permanent!

I hope that this short analysis has helped any of you weighing up the potential for both of these types of extra-curricular experiences abroad! There are likely differences across organisations and also how long each have been running for as well to consider (I know that the Think Pacific internships have gotten better due to them having more experience now). But thank you for reading, and I hope you can get yourself on a short-term international experience soon (virtual or in-person)!

All images used are either my own, thinkpacific.com or from unsplash.com.