Building awareness, interest, and readiness towards college course through work immersion

Abstract

Work immersion is required before graduation for senior high school students that aims to prepare the students for college life, particularly for humanities and social sciences (HUMSS) students. Despite the restriction in face-to-face classes and prohibiting industry-based experience, teachers need to build the students’ awareness, ignite their interest and uplift their readiness for college courses. So, teachers decided to implement work immersion via a blended modality wherein students experience school-based and online work immersion. This study aimed to build the HUMSS students’ awareness, interest, and readiness for college courses. A practical action research design was utilized to measure the variables before and after the work immersion implementation. Hence, survey questionnaires and interviews were the data collection tools employed to collect both quantitative measures and qualitative descriptions of experiences. The findings show that the students have low awareness, interest, and readiness for their preferred college courses before implementing work immersion in a blended modality. However, after two months of implementation, all variables become high and significant differences exist before and after the implementation. The work immersion using a blended modality effectively increased students’ awareness, interest, and readiness for college courses. However, they suggested having more webinars and activities, more learning materials, frequent face-to-face interactions, parents’ involvement during the webinar, and a student committee for communication.