Employability Skills, Co-curriculum Management, Peer Interaction and Contextual Teaching and Learning in Technical Institutions

Employability Skills (ES) is the deciding factor in hiring graduates by potential employers in today’s environment. Failure of Technical institutions in embedding both technical and employability skills among its graduates will lead to their unemployment. To remedy the situation it is pertinent to identify the factors that contribute to ES development among graduates. Therefore, this study aims to uncover the role of lecturers’ interaction, peer interaction, contextual teaching and learning, co-curriculum management and learning infrastructure in the development of employability skills among engineering students. A total of 252 students who were in their final semester of engineering studies at technical institute in Malaysia were involved in this study. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 19. Stepwise Regression Analysis indicated that three of the five factors (co-curriculum management, peer interaction and contextual teaching) significantly contributed to the development of students employability skills.

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