Pedagogical Analysis and Multifaceted Evaluation of an Engineering Co-Op Program

Abstract

The ever-increasing complexity and challenges of the higher education coupled with more public scrutiny for its efficacy necessitate more in depth analysis and evaluation of the educational best practices. One such practice is the cooperative (co-op) education. While co-op education has been around for more than a century, its implementation is still barely more than nominal in higher education. Even though there are studies published to demonstrate its effectiveness, more in depth studies, both spatial and temporal, seem to be warranted to narrow the widening gap between students' jobs-first and institutions' intellectual-experience-first expectations. In this paper, we summarize the first and highly successful coop program in Turkey at TOBB University of Economics and Technology (TOBB ETU). Our analysis include a taxonomy of different co-op programs to contextualize TOBB ETU's. Further, we touch upon the theoretical underpinnings from a variety of generally accepted foundational work. As part of the evaluation of the program, we provide a preliminary assessment of a longitudinal study as the first from Turkey and one of a very few from the non-US, international institutions. We believe that ours is the first to report an evaluation of co-op programs in terms of pre-co-op, post-co-op and graduated students separately.