There is growing focus on graduating global citizens who can advocate for and operationalize sustainable futures by advancing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With the high volume of internships the University of Waterloo facilitates, there was need to better understand how these internships might be contributing to the…

Employers expect to hire college graduates who are prepared for their careers with strong skillsets prior to entering the workforce. The purpose of this action research study is to explore the perceptions of undergraduate engineering students' career readiness competencies and supervisors' expectations to further enhance the skills necessary to be…

Work-integrated Learning (WIL) seeks to bridge the gap between 'scholastic' training and work. This study explores the ironic fact that the WIL discourse remains formed by the idea of "academia" and the "real world," an idea that in decisive ways creates this gap. A genealogical discourse analysis of how this idea operates in…

Emerging research suggests that students from equity-deserving groups (EDGs) may experience barriers within work-integrated learning (WIL) that other students may not face, and such barriers may negatively impact students' participation in WIL. Guided by a social justice lens, this study used interviews of co-operative education (co-op) students…

The purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences of women engineering students through socialization processes during their cooperative education, co-op, experience., in which students gain work experience in their chose industries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with female engineering students who have completed at least…

This qualitative study examined how undergraduate engineering students studying in the U.S. experienced failures during their cooperative education (co-op) and how they recovered from them. Six students attending a private research university in the Northeast participated in two semi-structured interviews via Zoom. The narrative inquiry approach…

WIL practitioners encounter ethical issues, dilemmas, or conflicts ('risks') in the delivery of work-integrated learning (WIL) programs. Ethical risks which are not properly managed can have reputational, legal, and financial consequences for the higher education institution (HEI). Whilst students' experiences of ethical risks, particularly in…

The idea of dual vocational education and training (VET) has developed almost since VET education in Poland was established when the nation became a sovereign country in 1919. VET reforms -- during the 20 years before the Second World War and after 1945 -- were carried out to support rising industry and other developing areas of the economy.…

This article presents a research project that set out to better understand the transformational learning of students working with a real-world client in the design thinking process. The article presents a case study involving a partnership between Grand Valley State University and Founders Brewery to design, develop, market, and distribute a…

The paper aims to evaluate and compare across a large range of countries the impact of gender diversity on the overall job satisfaction of lower-secondary education teachers. It also seeks to examine whether the effects of gender similarity are asymmetrical for men and women. The empirical evidence is based on the estimation of multilevel models…

Purpose: This paper aims to present an interpretation of freehand drawings produced by a sample of final year degree level learners in response to the question--"What is civic engagement"? The aim in using this approach, with final year degree learners from different countries, but pursuing the same degree, was to compare and contrast…

Digital skills are thought to be a key competence of the twenty-first century. With the rapid growth of internet and communication tool (ICT) usage among both students and teachers, cooperative (co-op) education programmes, like other educational institutions, face the challenge of integrating and supporting digital skill development. However,…

Quality of teaching and student commitment to their study programme in higher education are considered to be important aspects of the learning process and of achievement behaviour. The focus of the investigation was to analyse the (1) changes in students' commitment to their study programme and in their perceptions of the quality of teaching, (2)…

This study examines the effect of participation in cooperative education (co-op) programs on engineering undergraduate students' academic and employment outcomes, with particular attention to diversity in engineering. Co-ops are partnerships between an academic institution and an employer designed to engage students in early practical work…

It has become evident within higher education and within (or in partnership with) the workplace that there is a growing demand for an integration of learning within the workplace. Formal and intentional models and processes utilizing experiential learning methods and pedagogy are often referred to as work integrated learning. However, there is a…