Do experiences in the classroom translate to improved job interview skills
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Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Welcome to my Wisconsin Teaching Fellows poster.
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Uh huh.
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My name is Chris Yankee.
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I'm at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, and this
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poster was actually printed the week that everything changed changed
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last spring, but I'm happy to walk you through it
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at this virtual conference.
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So I just took the poster elements and broke them
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up into this presentation.
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Yeah, so I was interested in Looking at the Competencies,
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published by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
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They published list of skills that employers want to see
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in college graduates.
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But these skills are generally not explicit in college learning
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or in course, learning outcomes.
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But they do show up in our courses in a
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variety of ways.
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So, for example, communication skills last year was the number
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one competency that employers wanted to see in our graduates,
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followed by problem solving skills, ability to work in a
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team. Some of these change order from year to year,
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but the top 10 list is pretty is pretty stable.
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Yeah, So what I did is I used a tool
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that we have available for our students on campus called
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Big Interview, and, um and so what's kind of cool.
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You can introduce students to the to the tool, and
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they can use it to help them improve their interview
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skills. But I created a pre interview in a Post
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interview, and then during the semester I had a semester
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long project incorporated into the, um into the course, and
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then I compared other pre and post responses.
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The questions were drawn from a standard internship interview set
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that was available in Big Interview.
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And so these were first year biology students.
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So these are the first semester they have been on
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campus. Um, and the questions were of three types.
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There were behavioral questions.
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There were Tell me about yourself questions and then job
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accomplishments questions.
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And then the same 10 questions were used in both
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the pre and Post interview.
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And these are very common questions that you would hear
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in a variety of job interview settings.
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Mhm, the intervention or the semester long project was a
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cure, of course, based undergraduate research experience that we developed
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at Squirrel Net and all of our cures are available.
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Um, are there published at core source.
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If you want to go there or you can go
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to our website and, um, read more about them if
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you're interested in in these, uh, squirrel based projects.
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But this particular semester, 24 students were involved in the
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research, and it involves putting out trays in different habitats
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and and with an unknown amount of seed in this
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case, 10 g leaving it out for a certain amount
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of time.
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And then squirrels would come and eat the seeds.
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Uh, then you would sift them and see how much
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seed was left and how much seeds left is called
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it, giving up density when when squirrels no longer fed
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more on those on those trays.
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Um, and so it gets an optimal foraging theory and
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landscape of fear type things in ecological and ecology.
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But it required a lot of coordination, a lot of
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teamwork, a lot of problem solving.
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And then, at the end of the semester, students had
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to write a collaborative research paper and do an oral
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presentation. Yeah, so what?
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I did, um, first in Big Interview, you'll you'll have
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duration. So it tells you how how long the responses
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were. So I'm like, Well, there's some quantitative data I
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can look at right away and just to to ask
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the question.
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Did duration time change from the pre and post interview?
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I should say here that I also since I had
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the i r.
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B um, I had a senior course as well, and
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I gave this big interview pre and post, um, test.
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So actually, just once they just did this once.
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And seniors, um, the answer, those 10 questions as well.
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These were both communication in the majors courses.
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I thought it was a nice, um, comparison.
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But when you look at the pre and post just
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the pre and post and I broke it up by
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male and female, um, you can see that the males
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there was no significant difference in the duration of their
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their, uh, interview responses on average.
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But females from pre to post did did increase, um,
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significantly in the duration of their responses.
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Um, in comparison the females and female freshmen post response,
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Our post interview, uh, performed about the same as as
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seniors in just just the duration of the response.
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Yeah, mhm.
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I took, um So I transcribed all of these interviews
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and I used a, uh, package called Q Q D.
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A minor uh, to code the student responses.
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And in this particular, um, graph here I was interested
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in responses that specifically dressed skills that nace saw as
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important in the workplace.
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Um, unfortunately, in Q t a minor, the output these
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colors don't match up exactly, But don't worry about that.
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Um, the interesting thing here is initiative and leadership in
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both pre and post um, interviews, uh, were the most
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highlighted in first year student responses.
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And then after the cure after the semester, a number
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of competencies, um, were highlighted more in particular the quantitative
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literacy, because they had to do they do in our
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challenge, they learned some are statistical package stuff as well
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as oral communication.
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Increased a bit in their interview responses.
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What's interesting to me is nace identified written communication as
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their top competency.
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But students really didn't highlight that competency at all in
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either the pre or the Post interview, even though they
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had a collaborative paper that they had to write.
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Yeah, And then finally, I looked at what life experiences
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students drew, um, their response examples from, for example, in
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the pre interview freshman pretty much right out, right out
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of right out of high school.
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Most of the examples came from Job These are only
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talking about.
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These are just looking at questions about teamwork.
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And so all of their most of the responses came
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from job examples and then extra curricular sports activities like
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their football team or track team or dance team, for
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example, with relatively few examples from college courses.
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However, in their post response their Post interviews, they pretty
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quickly pivoted to giving more college chorus examples of teamwork
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as well as um, college Research down here, Number four,
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which didn't show up in the pre interview with still
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a fair amount of extra curricular examples.
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But job examples decreased quite a bit mhm.
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And finally, when we compare that with seniors, the Post
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interview freshman, um, and the seniors were similar in providing
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a lot of college course examples for their for their
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teamwork on the teamwork questions.
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Um, and the seniors, however, really decreased the number of
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those extra mural or extracurricular, um, examples in their list
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and talked again more about college research and internships that
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they've done Okay, So anyway, thank you for listening to
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my presentation