Transferable Skills: From Work to School

Abstract

The focus of this project is on finding key skills that have been developed and/or transferred to the workplace from previous school experience, and how these relate back to a student’s school term. Following a phenomenological approach, this paper explores three case studies and tracks various skills from their coop term into their school term. The most transferable skills were communication, time management, organization, responsibility and problem solving. Some students also specified skills such as diligence, focus and the need for initiative as vital for a successful work placement. One consistency was that students did not find that their technical skills transferred between terms, but rather that there was far more emphasis and transferability of general skills. Therefore, general skills were the most transferable, both to and from the workplace. Finally, students mentioned the applications of skills to clubs, indicating the importance of extracurriculars in a student’s educational experience.

Transformation of Employability Skills Through Co-Op Experiences

“…This is a continuation of our work published in CEEA/ACEG 2019 [4]. In that work, we focused on the transition between co-op and school contexts and which skills transferred successfully.…”