Cooperative Employment Research Articles

Measuring the Effectiveness of a Hybrid Pedagogy in a Large-Scale Community College Soft Skills Intervention

ABSTRACT In 2013, an urban college developed a mandatory soft skills course. Unique among postsecondary institutions, the course has been running since fall 2015. Research has now been conducted into the effectiveness of the course. A mixed-methods research study collected primary data and a literature review of the pertinent secondary data. Data sets include a comparison of co-op employer ratings of students in a semester before the course was mandated and a semester after the course was mandated; a survey of co-op employers to rate their co-op student’s soft skills achievement; and a pre-post/post-pre survey of current students asking them to rate the importance of soft skills, their knowledge and demonstration of soft skills, and their intention to use soft skills. All data strongly support the claim that the course has been a positive soft skills intervention. Hypotheses are shown to be valid: current students see the course as an effective way of improving their understanding of soft skills, their ability to deploy soft skills, and their intention to deploy soft skills in future; and, co-op employers see it as a positive intervention by reporting more effective demonstration of soft skills among co-op students who have taken the course than among co-op students from other institutions who have not taken the course. We conclude that offering a course that follows our pedagogy is the most effective way to increase postsecondary student soft skills capabilities and ensure employers continue to be satisfied with graduate soft skills.

INCORPORATING EMPLOYER AND STUDENT ASSESSMENTS INTO A GRADUATE ATTRIBUTE ASSESSMENT PLAN

When faced with assessing the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) graduate attributes, most programs will start by focusing oninstructor assessments. Course instructors are uniquely positioned to assess their students’ learning, and instructor assessments are sufficient to meet CEAB accreditation requirements. However, for a full picture, data from multiple sources is always desirable. At the University of Victoria, we have chosen to include co-op employer and student assessments in our graduateattribute assessment plan. In this paper, we present the assessment tools we have identified and created, and outline the system we have developed to sustainably produce assessment reports every term for every program. We highlight some of the challenges we have faced, and conclude by discussing our future plans

Employing Co-op Employer Evaluations to Assess Outcomes

The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo is preparing to employ outcomes-based assessments to inform program improvement as required by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) and the Ontario Council of Academic Vice Presidents (OCAV). Engineering at Waterloo requires all students to complete five 4-month work terms to graduate; a model of Co-operative education that involves a sequence of alternating work and academic terms. Upon completion of each work term employers complete a Student Performance Evaluation (SPE) that provides students with feedback on their work term and is employed to assign a grade to the student for the term. This presentation will describe an innovative use of historical SPE information to initiate a process that will lead to their use for outcomesassessment for program enhancement.

Co-operative(Co-op) Education at University of the Pacific And Its Assessment for ABET Accreditation of Mechanical Engineering Program

Co-operative (Co-op) education is a college program that integrates classroom studies with paid, productive and real-life work experience. A mandatory Co-op program for the degree is introduced with a sample curriculum from the Mechanical Engineering program at University of the Pacific. The mandatory Co-op program requires a minimum of 7 months of work experience with the option of pursuing a 12 month program. Students also have the opportunity of participating in an Engineering Industry Fellowship (EIF) program or an International Engineering Co-op program (IECP). University of the Pacific has engineering programs in Bio-Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Engineering Management, Engineering Physics, and Mechanical Engineering. All the programs are ABET-accredited except the Bio-Engineering program, which is relatively new. The Co-op employers evaluate the Co-op students at the end of the working period before returning to school, and the students also provide an evaluation of their Co-op experience. Co-op employer evaluations of student work are used in ABET assessment methods developed by the Mechanical Engineering program at University of the Pacific.

Developing and maintaining a co-op employer network

Developing and maintaining a co-op employer network