บทคัดย่อ/เนื้อเรื่องย่อ:
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The objectives of the research were to 1) explore the key characteristics of co-operative education conducted in higher education institutions in Thailand, 2) investigate the procedure of co-operative education employed in higher education institutions in Thailand, 3) examine the evaluation of the effectiveness of co-operative education undertaken in higher education institutions in Thailand, and 4) analyze the influential factors affecting the effectiveness of co-operative education of higher education institutions in Thailand. It was qualitative research. Data were collected through documentary research, in-depth interview, and non-participant observation. The total of 40 samples was divided into two groups. The first group of the samples comprised university administrators, co-operative education teachers as supervisors, and students. All were from three universities including Suranaree University of Technology, Walailak Univeristy, and Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi. The second group of the samples consisted of administrators from business organizations, and staff acting as supervisors. All of them were from three companies including Western Digital (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Betagro Public Co., Ltd., and Microchip Technology (Thailand) Co. Ltd, (as they were partners joining in the co-operative education with the 3 universities listed above). For the results of the study, those 3 universities had different perceptions on the concept of co-operative education overall. However, some of its key characteristics were in common, which included the emphasis on professional development of science and technology fields, and the aim to provide students with effective professional preparation and development, where the students could develop themselves according to their own strength and weakness through professional experiences at workforces. The focus was targeted on students. The common procedure of co-operative education of the 3 universities was divided into 3 consecutive phases including 1) Pre-Co-operative Education, 2) WhileCo-operative Education, 3) Post- Co-operative Education. The evaluation of the effectiveness of the co-operative education of those 3 universities was conducted in 3 different domains. The first domain was the evaluation of the students’ quality, which could be observed from the students’ performance, and skills while they were on professional training at the workforces. The second domain was the evaluation of the university quality, which could be measured from the quality of the teachers, the co-operative education curriculum whether the quality was maintained, and it remained updated, the appropriateness of the procedure and time allocation for pre-training service, the management on cooperative education operation, the co-operative education coordination between the teachers and staff for supervision, knowledge sharing between the university and the business organizations, preparation to promote students’ work readiness and working skills. The third domain was the evaluation of the quality of business organizations, which could be measured from their provision of training for internship students, their procedure of co-operative education operation, the sizes of their business, internship duration at the workforces, their budget allocation for the co-operative education operation. Regarding the influential factors analysis, the research discovered that the factors affecting the effectiveness of co-operative education consisted of financial factor, institutional factor, leadership factor, and innovative management factor, whereas the political factor had no effect towards the effectiveness of the co-operative education.
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