Employing Co-op Employer Evaluations to Assess Outcomes

The CEAB accreditation requirement of graduate attributes and continual improvement processes (GACIP) has been a pervasive topic in the annual CEEA conference proceedings since 2010. The proceedings are a rich primary source of work being done in Canadian tertiary institutions. This narrative review of the literature consolidates and discusses the relevant CEEA papers for 2010-2017 in a manner that is useful to leadership and decision-makers at accredited faculties of Engineering nationwide. Four guiding research questions were asked of this literature: (1) What general frameworks are being implemented as accredited faculties of Engineering across Canada approach GACIP?; (2) What are the specific activities and methods of one or more of the GACIP steps?; (3) What are the roles and responsibilities of people involved?; and (4) What perspectives are taken in response to the CEAB accreditation criteria, including concerns, issues, and benefits? A qualitative content analysis was conducted on 106 papers meeting selection criteria. Emergent topics were used to form the discussion.

Section: Assessment Of Soft Graduatementioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches to Graduate Attributes and Continual Improvement Processes in Faculties of Engineering Across Canada: A Narrative Review of the Literature

Parker

Watson

Ivey

et al. 2019

“…Dalhousie and Memorial Universities have integrated graduate attribute assessment into the on-campus portion of their co-op curriculum ([6], [2]). The University of Manitoba has talked to postgraduation employers of their students to gather assessment data ( [4]), and the University of Waterloo has taken an existing tool that gathers co-op employer evaluations for co-op work term marking purposes and repurposed it for graduate attribute assessment ( [5]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-Op Employer Evaluation of the Graduate Attributes: A Comparison of Two Approaches

Gwyn

Gupta

2015

Cooperative education (co-op) is animportant and mandatory part of undergraduateengineering at the University of Victoria (UVic). Becauseof this close integration with the curriculum, the Facultyof Engineering has chosen to use co-op employerevaluations of students as part of the assessment of theCEAB graduate attributes. This paper will describe thetwo employer surveys currently in use at UVic: oneadministered by the university’s co-op office andrepurposed for attribute assessment; and a second,possibly unique in Canada, designed expressly foremployer assessment of the attributes. Results arepresented from each, showing our employers tend to rankstudents highly in attributes such as Knowledge Base,Ethics and Equity, and Life-Long Learning, but lower inEconomics and Project Management. When results fromthe two surveys are combined, we find systematicdifferences between the responses from the two tools. Weconclude that caution is needed when combining resultsfrom different assessment tools.

“…Parker, Fondacaro and Nespoli describe the use of a Student Performance Evaluation form implemented by the University of Waterloo. Employer evaluation takes place at the end of each work term and the feedback is used for assessment purposes [15]. A historical trend approach is used to inform program enhancement by using three years co-op work-term data from 12 engineering programs.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work-term Experience and Graduate Attribute Assessment in Software Engineering Co-op Program at University of Ottawa

George

Peyton²

2017