Re-Engineering Cooperative Education Learning

The authors set out the importance of the inter-relationship between engineering education and practice, in the context of the US Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology's Engineering Criteria 2000. They suggest that cooperative education can play a key role in filling the gap between theory and application in the teaching of engineering students, and point out that their proposals, although made in the specific context of the USA, have international relevance as the trend towards ‘globalization’ reduces national distinctions. The paper examines the learning needs of engineering students, lists the key challenges facing educational institutions, presents a model of the cooperative education process, and illustrates it with a case example of cooperative education in practice in the Electrical and Computer Engineering programme at Northeastern University.