Co-op program effectiveness survey

Siedenberg, J. Weintraub, J. ED and Wilson, J. Library Reference Search. Please note that this site is privately owned and is in no way related to any Federal agency or ERIC unit.

Further, this site is using a privately owned and located server. This is NOT a government sponsored or government sanctioned site. Popular Pages Home. Cooperative education may be defined as a structured program in which periods of study alternate with periods of related work experience. At the secondary level, students usually attend classes for part of the day and work for part of the day. Postsecondary co-op most often alternates a quarter or semester of classes with a period of full-time employment; college credit is often awarded for the employment period.

What do employers gain from participation in co-op? Although the most obvious beneficiaries are students and employers, educational institutions discover academic and economic advantages to co-op programs:.

Among the issues in the debate on the effectiveness of cooperative education are 1 the numbers of students and institutions participating and 2 the quality and quantity of research evidence on the effects. The picture of cooperative education that emerges from a review of the literature has two faces.

On the one hand, anecdotal and some research evidence demonstrates that the benefits listed earlier are realized by some students, institutions, and employers. It appears to work best in metropolitan settings, in community colleges, and for students who major in engineering, business, and health occupations. Brown, S. Cooperative Education: Characteristics and Effectiveness. ERIC Digest. Some of the ways students benefit are as follows: o Clarification of career goals o Increased relevance of learning and motivation for study o Improved self-reliance, self-confidence, responsibility o Practice in human relations skills o Financial assistance for educational expenses o Contacts with potential employers o Feedback through performance assessment o Employability skills and marketable job skills o Exposure to practicing role models o Higher starting salary after graduation Examples of student benefits are provided by La Guardia Community College.

There is a 96 percent retention rate for the first five years, and 95 percent stay with us," he said. He added that most are hired from small, rural villages.

We are trying to uplift the lives of poor people who cannot afford higher education or good jobs. This is life-altering for these people. Benefits of Continuous Feedback.

Co-op programs rely on feedback from employers and students to keep up with technological skills needed in the workplace and to assess a student's capabilities, according to educators in Canada and the United States. Co-op education is a fundamental part of the HR pipeline as it could lead to employment, explained Kettil Cedercreutz, Ph. It, too, has a co-op program.

This will lead to a dialogue to change the software. In turn, we will lose employers if the students don't have the right skills. We need to know where industries are going to stay on the right track. A co-op student hire is the equivalent of a four-month interview where both the employer and student can determine whether they have a future together. Catherine Skrzypinski is a freelance writer in Vancouver.

Aliah D. Wright, SHRM's technology editor contributed to this story. Was this article useful? SHRM offers thousands of tools, templates and other exclusive member benefits, including compliance updates, sample policies, HR expert advice, education discounts, a growing online member community and much more.

You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server. Please enable scripts and reload this page. By Catherine Skrzypinski May 30, Reuse Permissions. Image Caption. Waterloo: Canada's Tech Hub More than 19, students are enrolled in co-ops at Waterloo, where technology plays an integral role.

Communication Technology. Their opinions can help you determine which programs are successful and which ones need improvements. Student feedback is valuable for the institution and also for the students themselves. Studies show that students who feel like their voices are heard experience greater self-worth, engagement, academic motivation, and sense of purpose.

You can harness the power of student voices to improve their academic outcomes and the success of the college or university as a whole. Most students are full of opinions, but they don't always have the opportunity to share them. Academic program evaluation questionnaires allow students to provide their honest feedback under the protection of anonymity. Course evaluations gather crucial information and ideas that professors and administrators can use to improve their academic programs. Student surveys are beneficial to colleges and universities because they can help:.

At a higher education institution with thousands of students, it's challenging for administrators to continuously monitor every student. Professors interact with their students throughout the week, but even they don't have access to insider information. Regularly conducting student surveys helps you catch problems that could otherwise remain unknown. Surveys can reveal minor issues before they turn into something bigger.

Some students feel uncomfortable revealing personal information or asking for help in person. Surveys allow you to identify struggling students who are too nervous to reach out any other way. Measuring program effectiveness with surveys can help you create meaningful goals that significantly impact students. Students are the best critics because they experience the curriculum firsthand.

Their perspectives can drive positive changes for the entire college or university. Customizing your programs to meet your student's needs helps ensure they have the best experience and education possible.

Higher education institutions receive limited funding to cover all their expenses. Survey feedback allows colleges and universities to identify which programs and activities are the most important to students so they can plan their budget accordingly. It also helps administrators identify students' need for grants and other financial resources. With the rise of the internet and social media, colleges and universities work hard to maintain a positive public image. Listening to student feedback from surveys can help you manage potential conflict before it becomes a public issue.

It also helps administrators recognize the key values and opinions of the student population to respond better to their concerns. Offering students real solutions to their problems shows that you listen to their feedback and value their perspective.

Program evaluations are even more crucial for online educators who have minimal interaction with their students. When the coronavirus pandemic began, many professors found themselves teaching online courses for the first time with minimal training and support. Student feedback helps instructors adapt their traditional courses into an enriching online curriculum for their remote students. Surveying students in online classrooms can help you adjust your course design to meet their needs.

You can ask about their learning-style preferences and which activities and assignments were the most helpful. You can also ask questions to help you improve the structure and organization of your course. Online instructors must design their classes much differently than professors teaching traditional college courses. Professors who receive regular and effective feedback in their online classroom can adjust their approach to create a better student experience.

Colleges and universities are constantly striving to improve their programs so they can attract more students in the future. Student surveys are just one way higher education institutions can gather feedback to help them achieve this goal. Program evaluations can help administrators identify strategies to boost student retention and graduation rates. This information also helps them make decisions that promote student success and enhance the institution's reputation.

With feedback that guides courses, the students enrolled in these programs can achieve higher performance and enjoy the benefits of their success.

The quality of the program impacts the education that students receive. Collecting course feedback helps improve program effectiveness, which in turn helps students reach their educational goals.

Asking the right questions is crucial to collecting actionable feedback. Your program evaluation survey should gather information about the instructor, materials, structure, and other aspects of the course. Consider these survey questions to determine the effectiveness of your program:. A program evaluation survey is an instrument you can use to gather valuable data to solve challenges and guide your decision-making.

You can customize your survey to collect specific information that helps you reach your objectives. There are five key topics you should always include to help gain comprehensive insights. The following topics serve as a template for creating your program evaluation questionnaire:. While program evaluation questionnaire templates can provide formatting and topic ideas, you should choose questions tailored to your unique goals. Our software helps colleges and universities capture and analyze student feedback to fuel decisions.

Getting feedback from students in higher ed can be challenging. Your questionnaire's length, style of questions, format, and delivery of the survey can impact the response rate and quality of feedback you receive. The following tips can help you improve your course evaluation process :. Asking students to complete an optional survey on their own time will likely have unsuccessful results.

Most students may forget or choose not to do it. Giving students time to complete the survey in class can yield a much higher response rate. Most students are happy to take a break from course material to answer a few questions. It only takes minutes away from class to collect information that can significantly impact the success of your curriculum in the future.

Students are more likely to provide feedback when they feel like their opinions matter. In the weeks leading up to the survey, explain the importance of their input and how you will use it to make improvements. Share examples of how course evaluations have made a difference in the past.

Give students an incentive for completing the questionnaire. Offering bonus points is an easy way to increase participation significantly. Setting a target response rate for the entire class may encourage an even higher response rate. That way, students will encourage their peers to finish the survey so everyone can receive the reward. In case students missed your discussion on the importance of student feedback, be sure to include the purpose of course evaluations and the value of their responses at the top of your questionnaire.

Explain how their feedback will help other students, faculty, and the institution overall. A course evaluation survey aims to collect actionable feedback you can use to make improvements. Asking specific questions yields helpful information you can use to achieve this goal. For example, rather than asking, "Did the instructor cover the objectives of this course thoroughly?

Closed-ended questions have a preselected bank of answers, like multiple choice or true-false questions. Open-ended questions allow the respondent to write their own feedback. While closed-ended questions make it easy to compare large volumes of data, open-ended questions collect detailed insights and opinions from your students. Using a mix of both can help you collect comprehensive feedback in one short, simple survey.

The Likert Scale is a format for scaling survey questions to determine the respondent's attitudes, values, opinions, behaviors, or experiences. A Likert scale question starts with a statement, followed by a five- or seven-point ordered scale of potential answers. You can frame a Likert scale with various response options to measure levels of agreement, importance, satisfaction, difficulty, and many other perspectives.

For example, if you're using a five-point Likert scale to measure levels of agreement, the question would appear like this:. The syllabus accurately reflected the course content: Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neither disagree or agree, Agree, Strongly agree. Framing your program evaluation questions with the Likert scale allows students to provide a more detailed response than having only two options.

It also helps reduce measurement errors when respondents must choose from the available answers, even if they disagree with all of them.