Abstract
With the recent economic and technological rapid change, a major shift in the workforce nature is expected shortly. Construction management is currently focused on increasing productivity and optimizing structures costs. However, new management strategies rely on quality management, global manufacturing, building information modeling, and many others. Those new strategies require managers with soft skills and can operate in situations. With that in mind, cooperative education (Co-op) has a pivotal role in formulating the relationship between the universities and industry for better reflecting on the recently needed industrial requirements in curriculum content. In this paper, the role of the Co-op programs in university-to-career transition has been explored through a case study of the engineering management students of Prince Sultan University (Riyadh, KSA). Direct and Indirect assessment studies were performed to investigate the nature of the Co-op programs offered to the five student batches (2015-2019) of the Construction Management program (CMP), the students' gained experiences upon completion of the Co-op, the program's overall quality and efficiency, and the Co-op students' readiness to start their career. The 5A's indicators model has been used for the indirect assessment, while the SEF direct assessment tool was proposed to evaluate the student learning outcomes achieved by the end of the program, considering the evaluation of Employers, Faculty, and the students' self-assessment. The assessment results showed that the real-life experiences gained by Co-op students improved their job readiness. It also increased their chances of getting a job even before graduation. The study found that 70% of PSU construction management Co-op students got jobs through the Co-op. Nevertheless, the study also addressed several weak points associated with the offered Co-op, such as the unreliability of the employers' evaluation and ignoring the student self-assessment in the currently utilized direct assessment method.