Annotated Bibliography

Source:

Drysdale, Maureen T. B., Natalie Frost, and Margaret L. McBeath. “How often do they Change their Minds and does Work-Integrated Learning Play a Role? an Examination of ‘Major Changers’ and Career Certainty in Higher Education.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, vol. 16, no. 2, 2015, pp. 145-152. ProQuest, https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/how-often-do-they-change-their-minds-does-work/docview/2231207569/se-2?accountid=12761. Accessed 18 September 2021.

Summary:

This journal article “How Often do they Change their Minds and does Work-Integrated Learning Play a Role? An Examination of ‘Major Changers’ and career certainty in Higher Education” was an experimental article that proved the benefits of CO-OP programs. This article was published in Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education in 2015. It was led by Maureen Drysdale and her team to figure out the relationship between CO-OP programs and how often students change their major. The study was done at a research extensive university in Canada and all the participants were current students at that university. The sample consisted of both genders, and they ranged in their academic standing.  The point of the research was to find out whether CO-OP programs play a role in students changing their major or their career. The results show that the students in cooperative education programs change their majors less often compared to students who aren’t in CO-OP programs (Drysdale 150). Not only that, but it helped them to learn applications to the real world setting and solidify their interest in their major. On the other hand, the other students tend to debate and question their major since they don’t get the experience that the students in CO-OP programs attain. The article also goes a little in-depth about how students are also provided with a source of income through the CO-OP programs, but overall, it shows how cooperative education enhances career benefits (Drysdale 145-152).

Evaluation/Reflection:

The reason why I chose this article is that it talks about one of my main points as to why SUNY New Paltz students would highly benefit from cooperative education programs. I believe that this source is reliable since it was published in 2015, so it is fairly recent. It also has been peer-reviewed, so it has been written by researchers for other researchers and students. This article has a well-reasoned theory with strong supporting evidence. The graphs that are shown in this article would make the argument more compelling since the data shows the statistics that proved their theory; so, it is not just an opinion. It proves that students can understand what is right for them and they will be in a suitable environment after college. I absolutely agree with this because from a student’s perspective the last thing we would want is to feel lost in the real world. If we got a sense of it beforehand, then we would be able to adjust smoothly to our environments.

Source:

Main, Joyce B., Beata N. Johnson, and Yanbing Wang. “Gatekeepers of Engineering Workforce Diversity? the Academic and Employment Returns to Student Participation in Voluntary Cooperative Education Programs.” Research in Higher Education, vol. 62, no. 4, 2021, pp. 448-477. ProQuest, https://libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/gatekeepers-engineering-workforce-diversity/docview/2531845505/se-2?accountid=12761, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11162-020-09596-7. Accessed 18 September 2021.

Summary:

This scholarly journal titled “Gatekeepers of Engineering Workforce Diversity? the Academic and Employment Returns to Student Participation in Voluntary Cooperative Education Programs”, is also reliable since it has been peer-reviewed by other researchers. This article was published in Research in Higher Education in 2021. Joyce Main and Beata Johnson are part of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University, and their experiment was how CO-OP programs have a positive correlation to a student’s academic success and their employment, specifically, engineering students. They divided the experiment by their “dosages”: complete co-op participation versus no participation, partial participation versus no participation, and finally complete participation with partial co-op participation (Joyce Main 464). It goes extremely in-depth to find out which is the best “treatment” for students in order for them to achieve a higher final GPA and more suitable occupational outcomes. Their results show that the graduation rate, the final GPA, and time to complete a degree have increased for complete co-op students. One might think that since the time to complete a degree has increased, it is bad, but it only increased by 0.8 years (Joyce Main 468). Logically thinking, it is better to acquire more experience to thrive in the environment that they desire to be in, which was their main point throughout the article. (Joyce Main 448-477).

Evaluation/Reflection:

After reading this article, I was honestly surprised by how extensive their data was. Not only that, but it is also evident to see how those who are in co-op programs are in a completely different boat than the regular students. With this data, it strengthens my argument that co-ops provide a promising path to the occupation that the students want. Even though this experiment was directed toward engineering workforce, the results are statistically significant to generalize it to other work fields as well. What I like about this experiment is that the experiment was split up into different subsections that they called “dosages.” It really helps us as readers to understand their whole process to the finest detail. I also realized why the title mentions that cooperative education programs are “gatekeepers” because it leads to amazing opportunities in the professional world.