Co-op employer evaluation of the graduate attributes: a comparison of two approaches

Cooperative education (co-op) is animportant and mandatory part of undergraduateengineering at the University of Victoria (UVic). Becauseof this close integration with the curriculum, the Facultyof Engineering has chosen to use co-op employerevaluations of students as part of the assessment of theCEAB graduate attributes. This paper will describe thetwo employer surveys currently in use at UVic: oneadministered by the university’s co-op office andrepurposed for attribute assessment; and a second,possibly unique in Canada, designed expressly foremployer assessment of the attributes. Results arepresented from each, showing our employers tend to rankstudents highly in attributes such as Knowledge Base,Ethics and Equity, and Life-Long Learning, but lower inEconomics and Project Management. When results fromthe two surveys are combined, we find systematicdifferences between the responses from the two tools. Weconclude that caution is needed when combining resultsfrom different assessment tools.