This study aimed to empirically verify the mediating effect of creative behavior and self-efficacy in the relationship between the engineering core competency and the employability of engineering students participating in the Engineering Education Acc...
This study aimed to empirically verify the mediating effect of creative behavior and self-efficacy in the relationship between the engineering core competency and the employability of engineering students participating in the Engineering Education Accreditation Program (EEAP), explore the effectiveness of the EEAP and provide suggestions in operating the EEAP and fostering creative convergence talents.
Such purpose of the study can be addressed by following two questions; The first question is whether there exists a significant difference in the level of engineering core competency, creative behavior, self-efficacy and employability between the students participating in EEAP and the non-participant students depending on the engineering students’ demographic characteristics, the characteristics of employment preparation and the characteristics of participation experience in career educations and programs for employment support.
The second question is for the relationship of structural effect among engineering core competency, creative behavior, self-efficacy and employability of the engineering students participating in the EEAP.
In order to accomplish the purpose of this study, a hypothesis-testing empirical study was conducted. For data collection, a questionnaire survey was carried out on the students in the 3rd and 4th year who had been participating for more than 2 years in 6 engineering accreditation programs of C university where the EEAP was in execution.
Among the effectively collected data, a empirical analysis was made on 561 answers, and a structural model analysis was conducted on 282 students participating in the EEAP in order to verify precisely the relations between the factors of the students participating in the EEAP. As research tools, this study utilized those that obtained the content validity of experts and the facial validity of students, based on the tools qualified by existing studies.
Utilizing SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 18.0 statistical program, basic statistic and frequency analysis, reliability analysis and model goodness of fit test, technical statistic and normality analysis. correlation analysis, independent sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance were conducted on the data collected. In addition, the hypothesis was validated through a structural equation model analysis on the students participating in the EEAP and the mediating effect was evaluated through bootstrapping in order to explore the influential relation among the research variables.
The result of this study can be summarized as follows; First, the analysis result on the level difference of the research variables according to the demographical characteristics of the engineering students showed a significant difference in core engineering competencies, creative behavior, employability and self-efficacy depending on gender, grade and department. The analysis result on the level difference of the research variables according to the characteristics of student's employment preparation and the analysis result on the level difference of the research variables according to the students with or without engineering accreditation showed a statistically significant difference. The analysis result on the level difference of the research variables according to the participation in the EEAP showed that the scores of the respondents participating in the engineering education accreditation program were significantly higher than those of the non-participation respondents for all variables.
Second, the analysis result on the influential relations among engineering core competency, creative behavior, self-efficacy and employability showed there were positive influential relations among most of them. In other words, it was verified that engineering core competency gave a positive impact to creative behavior and self-efficacy. However, it was verified that it did not give any significant impact to employability. It also turned out that creative behavior did not give any significant impact to employability. self-efficacy turned out to give a positive impact to employability and creative behavior. Meanwhile, the mediating effect of self-efficacy turned out to be effective but the mediating effect of creative behavior turned out to be effectless. It means self-efficacy turned out to mediate completely the impact of engineering core competency over employability.
In the aspects of EEAP operation and human resource development, this result suggests following implications: First, this study suggest an effective solution to improve the employability through illustrating the relations among the variables such as engineering core competency, creative behavior, self-efficacy and employability in EEAP operation. In order to increase the employability, it is important to improve student's creative behavior and self-efficacy and, for this, it is necessary to operate non-curriculum programs, which is soft skills, together with curriculum programs in parallel.
Second, it suggests the roles of schools, enterprises and Accreditation Board for Engineering Education of Korea (ABEEK) of fostering creative convergence talents and the solutions for EEAP operation. It is also necessary to operate a revitalization project for science and engineering led by Engineering Education Innovation Center as well as EEAP in parallel. Engineering Education Innovation Center project can be expected to increase self-efficacy through the enlargement of student's participation in non-curriculum programs and the increase of enterprise internship opportunities. This can be a solution to improve the effectiveness of the EEAP and develop core competency necessary for engineering students to live in the 21st century.