NSOU MSW Field Work: The 30 Days You Arrange Yourself

When does NSOU tell you to start your field work?

Roughly seven to nine months after you enrol, through a notice and a one-hour workshop. The Department of Social Work at Netaji Subhas Open University dated its field work workshop notice 28 August 2024 for the January 2024 batch, 21 August 2025 for the January 2025 batch and 11 February 2026 for the July 2025 batch, each fixing a workshop a week or two later. Nothing NSOU publishes before that names a start date. Admission runs in January and July sessions, and the 2026-27 admission notification lists the MSW under code PGSW at a first-year fee of ₹5,200 plus ₹750 in other fees.

Batch	Notice dated	Workshop on Paper VIII
January 2024	28 August 2024	4 September 2024, online, 8 to 9 pm
January 2025	21 August 2025	29 August 2025, online, 3:30 to 4:30 pm
July 2025	11 February 2026	25 February 2026, online, 8 to 9 pm
January and July 2025, Kalyani Regional Centre	6 May 2026	14 May 2026, in person

How long you then get is not published in advance. Among the field work notices NSOU has issued on this paper, only the commencement notice of 31 August 2023 fixes an end date: it told learners to finish the placement and the 30-day report by 30 November 2023, three months from notice to submission. A fortnight lost to an organisation that stops answering the phone is a seventh of that, so line up two possible hosts before the workshop, not after.

Which organisations can host the placement without permission?

Two categories, both self-service. An NGO on the list NSOU publishes needs no permission, and neither does any NGO registered on NITI Aayog's NGO Darpan portal. The notice of 31 August 2023 puts it plainly: no permission is required for carrying out field work in enlisted NGOs or NGOs registered in the Darpan Portal.

The published List of NGOs for Field Work for MSW-I is a 169-page compilation in three parts. The department's own table runs sixteen pages, giving each organisation's address, district, a named contact with phone and email, the registration details including an NGO Darpan ID where one exists, and the fields it works in. Behind it sit a district-wise West Bengal list the file marks as sourced from ngodarpan.gov.in and a set recommended by the Board of Studies.

Read the registration column first. Entries carry a West Bengal society number in the S/ or SO series, a Darpan unique ID in the WB/year/number form, or both, and that identifier is what puts it inside the no-permission route. A blank one is worth asking about.

The NGO Darpan portal is the wider route, national and not curated by the department. Both the 2023 notice and the checklist point you to it.

This is a West Bengal list because NSOU is a West Bengal university, and UGC's distance-learning regulations require an open university to run admissions, contact programmes and examinations strictly within its territorial jurisdiction. Elsewhere your own institution governs: the field placement rules at Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University and those at Karnataka State Open University are set separately.

What if the organisation you want is on neither list?

You apply for permission and attach the organisation's credentials. The 2023 notice requires learners placing themselves outside the enlisted NGOs or the Darpan portal to send registration certificates, the annual report and any brochures, addressed to the Director (i/c), School of Professional Studies, NSOU, DD-26, Sector-I, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700064.

Government offices are named in one document and gated by another. The 2023 notice lists Gram Panchayats, Municipalities, Block Development Offices, Sub Divisional Offices, District Magistrate Offices, schools, children's homes, correctional homes, special schools and hospitals as places you may work if they themselves permit it. The requirement to take permission from the university and/or the Learner Support Centre for that route is set by the learners' checklist, which also lets you attach a copy of the permission letter to the report.

Your Learner Support Centre is the other half of the mechanism. The 2023 notice tells learners to contact their centre for a permission letter if one is required. The 2018 manual routes the application through the study centre coordinator and adds the substantive test: the organisation must be registered and must work strictly on social work methods and principles.

NSOU publishes no processing time for that permission. Send a dated covering note, keep the acknowledgement, and ask for an expected date in the same message.

How many days is NSOU MSW field work, and are hours set per day?

Thirty days, and no hours are published. The MSW syllabus effective from January 2022 names the paper Field Work (Placement Report of 30 Days), and the 2018 manual describes a field visit for a period of 30 days. None of NSOU's field work documents states hours per day, days per week, or whether the thirty run consecutively.

A day count without an hour count means the organisation's working day sets yours, and that a two-hour visit and a full shift are the same unit on paper.

Put three questions to your coordinator in writing before the first day:

• May the thirty days be spread across weekends and holidays, or must they run continuously?
• Is there a minimum number of hours for a day to count as one of the thirty?
• What is the last date for this batch, and which notice carries it?

A written answer is what you produce if the count is later questioned. The manual also records that the University may arrange a six-hour personal contact programme session on field work, the one scheduled slot for putting such questions in person.

What has to be signed before you leave the organisation?

Two documents, and neither can be recovered later. The learners' checklist for the final field work report requires the original Field Work Placement Completion Certificate and the signed copy of the 30 days Daily Diary to be attached to the report.

The diary is a table, not a narrative. The specimen in the Manual for Field Work, Paper VII sets five columns: date, nature or type of work, outcome, remark by the supervisor, and signature of the supervisor. One row per day, with the supervisor writing the remark and signing it.

Get each row signed at the end of that visit. A supervisor asked to sign thirty rows weeks later is certifying from memory, and one who has left cannot sign at all. How to write the field work diary and journal entry itself is a separate question.

The completion certificate is the item NSOU publishes no proforma for. The 2018 manual says only that a certificate is required to be issued by the supervisor after completion of the field work. The 2023 report format asks for a copy of it; the later checklist asks for the original. Follow the checklist as the more recent instruction: carry the original, keep a scan. Ask your coordinator whether a departmental format exists before drafting one.

What does the report have to contain, and in which language?

Three sections, typed, in English or Bengali. The department's format for writing the field work report sets Section A for general information about the organisation, Section B for its work and your reading of it, and Section C for what you were involved in, with the daily report and the placement certificate attached.

Treat Section A as collection rather than writing. Its twelve items come off the shelf at the organisation: name and address, year of establishment, registration and awards, affiliation and NGO Darpan ID, historical background, mission and vision, objectives, collaborating agencies, funding, governing body, staffing pattern and beneficiaries. Ask for the annual report on day one and most of it arrives in one document.

The checklist rules handwritten, scanned and photocopied reports out of evaluation, and the 2023 notice asks for one copy for the Examination Department and one for you.

The department has given a length once: the guideline of 11 July 2021 set 3,000 to 5,000 words, about 10 to 15 A4 pages. Neither the 2023 format nor the checklist repeats it, so treat that as a past benchmark, not a rule.

When is the report submitted, and what is it worth?

At the viva, on a date the Examination Department notifies separately. The Manual for Field Work states that the report must be submitted at the time of the viva voce examination as per the notification of the examination department, so the date does not travel with the field work notice you have been watching.

The marks sit in two papers. The course structure gives PGSW-VIII, the report, 100 marks and PGSW-IX, the field work viva voce, 50. That is 150 of the 850 marks in MSW Part-I, a year carrying 68 of the programme's 136 credits.

Weighting matters here. The same structure gives theory papers 20 per cent assignment and 80 per cent term-end examination, and practical papers 100 per cent term-end. No assignment component exists to absorb a weak report.

Part-I is an exit point too: the syllabus awards a Diploma in Social Work after the first-year examination, the MSW after the second.

Can any of the thirty days be done remotely?

NSOU has run a fully desk-based version of this paper once, in 2021, and the instruction in force now does not allow one. The guideline issued on 11 July 2021 replaced placement with four recorded lectures, two NGO profiles built from public reports, and an essay on the pandemic in the learner's locality, on the stated ground that placing learners in NGOs would not be safe.

The current checklist closes that door. It requires the original placement completion certificate and a signed thirty-day diary, and a report assembled from websites produces neither. No later document reopens the 2021 route.

Some of the work does move off site: reading the annual report and registration papers, building the Section A profile, and the writing itself. The thirty days recorded in the diary, the supervisor's remark against each, the signature in the last column and a certificate on the organisation's own paper cannot.

The department and your study centre decide this, not the organisation hosting you. The UGC's Open and Distance Learning Programmes and Online Programmes Regulations, 2020 define the distance mode as delivering teaching and learning experiences including practical or work experiences, and bar any programme requiring a practical or laboratory course from online mode entirely. Social work is not among the disciplines the Distance Education Bureau lists as prohibited in the distance mode.

Get any relaxation in writing from the coordinator or the department, naming your batch and paper, before the first day. Do not start on a verbal assurance.

Does the Part-I host carry over into the Part-II dissertation?

No published NSOU rule says it does, and the paperwork is different. Part-II is assessed through Paper XVII, the dissertation, worth 100 marks, and Paper XVIII, its viva voce, worth 50, under a guide NSOU has approved rather than anyone at your host.

The revised dissertation guideline of June 2025 is strict about that supervision. Guidance must come from an approved or empanelled dissertation guide for MSW, each limited to ten learners in an academic year, and two documents must be attached in original: the Dissertation Workshop Participation Certificate and the Certificate of Guide. Without both, it states, the dissertation will not be accepted for evaluation.

No NSOU document empanels the person who signs your diary or sets a qualification for them; the published test runs to the organisation being registered and working on social work methods, not to the individual. Only your study centre coordinator can confirm in advance that your host will be accepted. Ask before the thirty days start, not after they are logged.