<p>ucbalumnus: My Occupational Therapy fieldwork was covered by financial aid and the college considered us “full time” even though we only paid for and received 6 credit hours for 40 hours/week of working for 6 months. It was part of the program. We received a grade and had to do it to graduate. Our program was a 4 1/2 year program. That was in the mid-late 80’s. I believe student teaching works the same way though. As do nursing clinicals. </p>
<p>My comment earlier was that it isn’t a bad thing to get that on the job real world training and it may benefit business students as well as nurses, teachers, therapists, etc. </p>
<p>I later supervised fieldwork students in the field. The first 6 or 7 weeks of their placements, they were a LOT of work. The last few weeks, they were functioning independently. It balanced out. I had to be present when they were with patients, but by the end of their time, I was sitting at my desk working on other projects and “listening” and they did all of the documentation. It wasn’t really free help because they were so labor intensive at first. I loved seeing them grow into professionals though :)</p>