A Study on the Educational Effectiveness of the Industry Professional Practice (IPP) Program

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to examine the effects of Industry Professional Practice (IPP), a long-term on-site training program. To achieve this, two groups of students answered multiple questions that pertained to four categories: “major”, “career”, “personal relationships”, and “problem-solving”. The first group consisted of 36 students currently enrolled at a university in Cheonan, Korea, and who participated in the IPP program (and have since returned to university). The other group consisted of 60 regular students at the same university who had never participated in the IPP program.

First, in the “major” category, IPP students displayed a higher score on the first of the six questions; demonstrating a statistically significant difference compared with non-IPP students. Second, in the “career” category, compared with non-IPP students, IPP students displayed a higher average score for all 4 questions – with a particularly high score and notably significant difference on the third question. Third, in the “personal relationships” category, IPP students displayed higher scores and a statistically significant difference on the second question (compared with non-IPP students). Fourth, concerning the “problem-solving” category, IPP students scored lower on the second question compared to the scores of non-IPP students, but this was not considered statistically significant. The results of the regression analysis showed that participation in the IPP program had a positive effect on the entire category of “career”, and on the aforementioned questions from both the “major” and “personal relationships” categories. Based on the results from this study, it is likely that participating in the IPP training program will enhance the education of Korean engineering students in the future.