COLLABORATION MODEL BETWEEN ENGINEERING EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS AND INDUSTRY TO IMPROVE STUDENTS PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Collaboration of higher education institutions with the industrial and government sectors are a fundamental issue on the day-to-day academic life. The participation of undergraduate students in projects associated with their professional studies, provides numerous benefits and strengthens their integral development.

The Faculty of Engineering Mexicali (FIM) of the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) offers the modality of Collaboration Projects with Credit Value (PVVC for its acronym in Spanish), so that students in their last stage of its professional studies can develop a particular project in an external institution. Aware of the importance of these projects, efforts have been made to improve the quantity and quality of PVVC.

In 2016, the Department of Professional Training and University Collaboration of the UABC developed the digital platform “Integral System for Professional Training and University Collaboration” (SIFPVU for its acronym in Spanish) at the institutional level, to facilitate communication with institutions and companies with which it has collaboration, streamline registration processes of students and external institutions/companies (receptor units), and to improve control and monitoring of projects. On the other hand, in the FIM the PVVC are non-mandatory and not all students who meet the requirements are enrolled in these projects, so at the end of 2016, strategies were implemented to increase the number of projects in each of the 11 educational programs of the faculty and also, to obtain the greatest benefits from these projects.

To measure the impact of both efforts, the number of PVVC in the last semesters and its behavior was analyzed, and surveys were conducted to know the opinions of the students who participated in PVVC, and the same exercise was made with the companies where the projects were carried out.

The results indicates that both, the development of SIFPVU and the promotion strategies at the FIM, have had positive effects, since the number of PVVC increased 98% from the 2015-2 to the 2017-2 semester, meaning that total of students that have had the benefits of this modality has been duplicated in two years.

Also, according to the surveys realized, students and unit receptors stated that the benefits of these projects are great. Students have the possibility to develop softskills by working with other professional people, learning mainly about leadership and teamwork. They also stablished that another great asset is the opportunity to apply in the real world the knowledge acquired in classroom. The answers from the industry remark the performance of the students, stating that their innovation thinking, creativity and computational skills are helping them with their internal processes.

Nevertheless, an opportunity area was detected related to the hours that students are allowed to be in the company since the institutional regulation is 4 hours, meanwhile companies could require them for up to 6. Finally, it is recommended that the results of this study are taken into account to the institutional administration, and in the design of future PVVC in the FIM. This could represent a replicable model for other higher education institutions in the engineering field.