To meet the challenge of putting a proper value on applied skills, the Faculty proposes to recognise time spent in acquiring them by granting credit for Coop semesters. These credits would supplement, rather than replace, the academic credits required by SFU for graduation. Coop semesters would be graded as Pass/Fail.
The primary advantage of this proposal is that it would emphasise to students that we consider coop an important part of the educational experience. However,it has the secondary advantage that it would bring us into line with every other major university offering Coop in Canada, all of which allocate Coop credit in exactly this way. This would remedy a problem that has been compromising the quality of education at SFU: if we were to follow the practice of other Canadian universities and include Coop credits in our FTE totals, our University would no longer be obliged to take in additional students to meet the shortfall created by failing to count these FTE's. This would allow us to meet enrollment targets while maintaining higher admission requirements, thus raising academic standards across the University, reducing class sizes, and alleviating the problem of course unavailability. Lastly, we note that a short-term benefit of this changes would be an automatic increase in the number of FTE's that could be counted towards DTO targets.
When this issue has previously been discussed by SCUS, concerns have arisen under two heads:
We agree that additive credit should only be granted to programs where effective mechanisms are in place. This is already the case for the five FAS Schools covered by this proposal. Quality is maintained in two ways. Firstly, through SFU's Coop program. This program is accredited by the Canadian Association for Cooperative Education, and to maintain its accreditation must demonstrate that each Coop work term provides students with the opportunity to learn through the application of academic principles in a work context and through exposure to new ideas and processes experienced in the workplace. Secondly, faculty or staff members in each FAS School are actively involved in the assessment of the Coop students' experience. In ENSC, for example, each returning student must give an oral presentation on his or her work experience to an audience of Coop staff member(s) and faculty volunteer(s), and submit a written work report that will be read by Coop staff and by a faculty member.
Work term reports are assessed for focus and organization, sense of audience, style and structure, mechanics and format. Reports describe engineering or technological issues dealt with by students during the work term. These reports help students refine their writing skills, but also allow the monitoring of learning during work terms. Major rewrites are required for about 30% of the reports submitted. ENSC faculty assess these reports.
Oral presentations are assessed for organisation, quality of visual aids, body language and eye contact, voice and language, and the handling of questions. Presentations describe what was learned during the coop term (focusing on an engineering issue.) While primarily aimed at enabling students to improve their oral presentation skills, these presentations also allow for the monitoring of learning during the work term. Re-presentations are rare, but occur when the original presentation has been poorly prepared. All presentations are assessed by both ENSC faculty and ENSC Coop staff.
During each work term, a Coop coordinator visits the student and the student's supervisor at the workplace. The student's progress and performance are reviewed.
Following the work term, the student must complete a work report, summarising the skills and knowledge obtained during the term. These reports are currently evaluated by Coop staff, both to ensure that the student has made proper efforts and to confirm that this placement provides adequate opportunities for appropriate learning. Receiving a passing grade for the coop semester is contingent upon the report's meeting a minimum standard. The work report is available to future students who may be considering a term with that employer. In addition, the student's workplace supervisor, who, for on-campus placements, will be a Kinesiology faculty member, submits an evaluation of the student's performance.
If the current proposal is accepted, the School will also commit to faculty review of the work reports. This will be organised by the Chair of the Undergrad. Program Committee (currently Richard Ward) who may review himself or delegate where appropriate.
Following the work term, the student must complete a work report, summarising the skills and knowledge obtained during the term, plus a summary of actual work performed and major products (if any) produced. The products should be documented carefully or, if written, a copy is to be included with the report.
Reports are evaluated by Coop staff, both to ensure that the student has made an appropriate effort and to assess that the placement has provided adequate opportunity for learning.
Receiving a passing grade for the coop semester is contingent upon the student report meeting a minimum quality standard. The report will made available to future students who may be considering a term with that employer.
The student's workplace supervisor submits an evaluation of the student's performance to be sent separately to the co-op staff. SIAT faculty also review the work reports in a process organised by the Chair of the Undergraduate Program Committee, who may complete the review personally or delegate it to other faculty as appropriate.
The faculty review will consider the overall quality of individual student work performed and whether a given student report is of a sufficiently high standard to receive a passing mark, and will advise the UGCC and co-op advisors of the value of future involvement with that particular employer.
In any case, the University has never in the past set its academic policies on the basis of spending the same amount of money on each student. Rather, we have determined what is pedagogically appropriate for each discipline and allocated resources accordingly -- for example, every student enrolled in an Honors program consumes more resources, and carries more FTE's, than a student in a Majors program, but it would be absurd for SCUS to object to a unit's introducing an Honors program on the grounds that it would divert funds to that unit. This case is precisely parallel.
The pedagogical value of the Coop experience may be most evident in the Faculty of Applied Sciences, but we believe each unit on campus should ask itself whether the coop experiences of its students have value. If they do, then that value can be assessed and recognised; if they do not, then that unit might wish to discourage its students from going on Coop at all.