This article reports on a phenomenological study conducted in 2013 to investigate co-op learning from the students' perspectives. 104 seniors were interviewed who had completed one to three periods of co-op employment. A stratified purposeful sample with proportional representation of six university colleges was used. Using a standardized,…

In this article, Gallagher and Mishra state that "innovation" is in vogue in the increasingly competitive and globalized higher education landscape, particularly in the world of serving working professionals in continuing higher education. Too often, however, colleges and universities do not consider the voice of the consuming public--in…

The authors report the results of a three-year longitudinal study of retention among undergraduate engineering students enrolled at four major universities. The study demonstrates that self-efficacy can be a critical factor in student persistence and can be broken down into three components: work, career, and academic self-efficacy. The authors…

Intrinsic to experiential learning is the challenge of empowering students to both reflectively engage with and inquire into ethical issues, while facing time, task, social, and other daily pressures. As designated "learners" in a professional setting, experiential education students typically see themselves as having little authority…

Mark Van Doren, the noted literary scholar, once remarked, "The college is meaningless without a curriculum, but it is more so when it has one that is meaningless." Many current critics of undergraduate curricula in America assent to the crucial need for programmatic renewal in our colleges and universities. They bemoan the cookie-cutter…

The concept of experiential learning, in one form or another, has been around a long time, some would say going back to Confucius. More recently, however, within the United States it was put into practice in a very aggressive form, cooperative education, created by Herman Schneider and initiated at the University of Cincinnati (UC) in 1906.…

Describes a corner restaurant and store in Worcester, Massachusetts, where high school students staff and help supervise. (JOW)

This document consists largely of descriptions of 15 industry-education partnerships in Massachusetts, selected on the basis of their creativity; the range of partnership organizations and activity they represent; the diversity of students, teachers, businesses, and communities they affect; and their innovative and efficient coordination and…

In response to expanding American industry in the late 1800s, manual training and industrial education were proposed to prepare properly trained workers. Industrial education was advocated as education for specific trades, and cooperative education was one of its most innovative forms. The first high school cooperative industrial course in the…

One of the most successful attempts to give instruction in the trades in the public high school and at the same time to preserve the best of the traditional high-school course is that begun at Fitchburg, Massachusetts. The cooperative plan, adopted in imitation of that in use in the college of engineering of the University of Cincinnati, has…

This program guide on establishing community education/work (E/W) linkages presents a variety of program options which have been tested at twelve Massachusetts E/W linkage sites. Community E/W linkages are defined as arrangements among members of the community to facilitate the transition of young people between institutional education and…

Focusing on graduates of cooperative vocational programs at the high school level, a study described and analyzed the in-school and post-high school labor market experiences of 427 students enrolled in four different programs during their junior and senior years: cooperative vocational, regular vocational, work study, and general academic. The…