The role of co-operative education in ensuring students´ success when transitioning from classroom to industry

Engineering schools in North America aim to prepare students for transitioning to the workplace by embedding the teaching of graduate attributes within the curriculum and using robust ways to measure learning outcomes. Some of the graduate attributes for engineering students include individual and team work, communication skills, professionalism, the impact of engineering on society and the environment, ethics and equity. Our paper discusses the collaboration between technical communication instructors and the staff of the Engineering Co-op program of the Faculty of Applied Science in the University of British Columbia, Canada. Our purpose is to examine the relationship between employability and graduate attributes and to explore the experiential aspects of transformative learning in the cooperative education model. In addition to learning about graduate attributes in the classroom, students can practice them and understand them better through their co-op work experience. Three instruments for measuring the learning outcomes are discussed: 1) a reality-based assignment designed to measure students´ understanding of graduate attributes; 2) a self-administered online survey; 3) a de-briefing questionnaire administered at the end of the co-op work term. The authors describe the instrument development and discuss the significance of students´ progressive understanding of graduate attributes.