Perception of Faculty Engineering and Built Environment's Students towards the Benefit of Industrial Training

Adaptation and validation of the Work Experience Questionnaire for investigating engineering students' internship experience

“…Generic competencies often reported by engineering students as learning outcomes of internship include communication and interpersonal skills, teamwork skills, problem-solving skills, presentation skills, time management skills, critical thinking, adaptability, confidence, independence, and perseverance (Au Yeung et al, 1993;Renganathan et al, 2012). While it has been consistently found in a number of studies (Lock, Bullock, Gould, & Hejmadi, 2009;Najid et al, 2012;Parsons et al, 2005;Tennant et al, 2018) that most engineering students perceived the development of teamwork skills and communication skills from their internship experience, some generic competencies were perceived to be better developed than others. For instance, Lock et al (2009) found that more engineering students perceived the development of teamwork skills (91%) and confidence (90%) than communication skills (77%) and self-motivation (74%).…”

“…For example, the Quality Clinical Placements Evaluation Questionnaire was developed by Courtney‐Pratt et al (2014) in the context of an eight‐week clinical placement for nursing students in an Australian university, while the Internship‐related Learning Outcomes Questionnaire was developed by Nghia and Duyen (2018) in the context of a two‐month internship for Tourism and Hospitality students in Vietnamese universities. It should be noted that the majority of studies evaluating students' engineering internship experience used instruments which were seldom validated (Najid et al, 2012; Renganathan et al, 2012) except for the survey used by Parsons et al (2005). However, the instrument implemented by Parsons and colleagues which contained learning outcome items generated from the 11 ABET learning outcomes was developed in the context of cooperative education in an American university.…”

“…Given the diversity in students' internship experience, there is a pressing need to evaluate the quality of engineering internship courses as part of the engineering curriculum so that areas for improvement in their design and implementation can be identified for the purpose of quality assurance. A review of studies evaluating students' internship experience, especially in the context of engineering internship (Au Yeung et al, 1993; Najid et al, 2012; Renganathan, Karim, & Li, 2012), revealed that current evaluation of engineering internship courses mainly relies on self‐designed evaluation instruments supported by weak or no validity evidence. Thus, there is a need for a validated instrument for evaluating engineering internship courses to provide valid, reliable, and comparable data on students' perception of their internship experience and learning outcomes.…”

Engineering Students’ Industrial Internship Experience Perception and Satisfaction: Work Experience Scale Validation

“…A set of attributes that should be met in engineering education, covering technical aspects and soft skills, include: applying knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering, using the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice, designing and conducting experiments, designing a system, component, or process to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems, and analyzing and interpreting data [41]. Several research studies reported that engineering students referred to communication and interpersonal, teamwork, problem-solving, time management, critical thinking, adaptability, confidence, independence, creativity, and perseverance skills as learning outcomes from their internship experiences [11,42]. However, there are differences in students' perceptions of soft skills improvement following their internship experiences; not all competencies are perceived to develop to the same extent [42,43], which implies that a single internship course providing the development of all generic competencies is questionable [44].…”

“…Several research studies reported that engineering students referred to communication and interpersonal, teamwork, problem-solving, time management, critical thinking, adaptability, confidence, independence, creativity, and perseverance skills as learning outcomes from their internship experiences [11,42]. However, there are differences in students' perceptions of soft skills improvement following their internship experiences; not all competencies are perceived to develop to the same extent [42,43], which implies that a single internship course providing the development of all generic competencies is questionable [44].…”