Instructors’ Considerations When Collaborating with Practitioners for Future Workforce Development

AbstractA paradigm shift toward workforce development is essential to ensure that the future workforce meets the expectations of the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Both industry and academic communities play different, but essential and complementary roles, which suggests a need for stronger industry–academia collaborations. These could be achieved by connecting instructors with practitioners through web-based collaborative platforms. However, user requirements for facilitating such collaborations on web-based platforms are yet to be formalized. As a precursor, this study investigates the factors which instructors in AEC-related academic programs would consider when collaborating with AEC practitioners to complement their pedagogical efforts. Understanding these factors could aid the development of web-based networking platforms that could facilitate greater interactions between industry and academia in preparing students for the workplace. To ensure triangulation, a mixed method approach was adopted, and data analysis was conducted from individual differences perspective based on demographic characteristics. Instructors’ considerations are influenced by students’ preferences and bias, students’ career and development, ease of organizing course-support activities, student learning outcomes, curriculum structure, and ethnic and gender diversity. The results showed both demographic similarities and differences in the considerations of instructors. The results of this study could serve as inputs for the design of a web-based collaborative network of instructors and practitioners. This study contributes to expanding literature on collaborations between industry and academia for future workforce development. The study also offers insights that could enhance these collaborations for maximal benefits to students.