Date: August 7, 2008 Time: 10:30 p.m. - 12:00 p.m. Location: Michigan State University, East Lansing MI Participants listed by group:
1) Reviewed minutes from July 24, 2008. Neeraj comments on the MDOT interview Neeraj: Lots of civil techs and they do a lot of lab work. They will finish the demographic piece and send it to us. But their demographic is not complex they have civil and civil techs and some electric.
2) Survey development review Employee Survey Draft August 5, 2008 3) Survey piloting schedule We had a subgroup meeting and we went through the last version of the employee survey. For the pilot we can start with Cascade and then see if it is necessary to do major revisions. Cindee: Kysha and I talked yesterday and she is making the contacts so that we can hopefully be able to start the pilots next week. Mark: let's take a look at what we get from the first one and then we will do a couple more. We went through the survey (link) and Mark edited on his word version as we went along Mark: One of the things we struggled with was the tradeoff between open and close ended items. This question what % of the time do you currently spend using computer skills? I am curious to see what we get here; we could get all the e-mail time and that sort of office stuff or something else. It could be potentially confusing for some people. Jon: we could say f. ex. excluding e-mail Mark: There is another question that asks more about technology so we could also move that questions after we asked specific technology questions and ask them what % of time in those specific tasks. We already heard from the employers that they do spend a lot of time on those types of things. Neeraj: They (MDOT) say that e-mail is very important for business and with technology they have been able to create change orders to do their work. Jon: Do they have a formal work flow for change orders that has technology support? Neeraj: The answer is yes but I don't know what technology it is. It could be as simple as scanning and sending f ex a new drawing through the food chain. - Discussion about survey items 18, 19, 20. Mision critical or most important to your job? Perhaps we need some more explanation here. - Decided to drop question 13 about the % of time spend in computing tasks. - With respect to training and continuing education Jon suggested to add somewhere a question about would you use more training in the universities/community colleges if it was more readily available and tailored to certain needs? This would inform curriculum later in the project. - Drop question 30. It is redundant. - For the pilot surveys there will be a sentence at the introduction about completing some more questions about the survey itself. - Cindee/Tammy will make the changes to the survey to have it ready for the pilot at Cascade. Fall meeting schedule - We decided on a schedule for the Fall meetings. December will be scheduled later. It is on the wiki. - For the AB meeting we decided that October is more realistic that September.
6) Evaluation discussion. (See email from Mark Jenness) Mark: I've e-mailed Mark J. about having a meeting with them and the entire group to discuss evaluation issues and he replied (see e-mail on the agenda).
4) Interview Process: Employer Contact List Taryn went through the contact list. Taryn: We looked at the company's website and extracted the engineering disciplines that they are hiring for as listed on their websites. We also crossed reference the companies to companies that we knew hire from LCC and/or MSU. This is reflected in this last version of the list. That some disciplines do not appear listed reflects the fact that they might not have been listed in the opening positions for a particular company. There is ambiguity in the descriptions and different companies described their positions differently from others.
Mark: the next step is to use this date to do a preliminary list. Taryn: Yes, we can compile a suggested list of 25 companies to approach. CSW will do this and we will send it around for review.
5) AB members contact for interview status We have three interviews scheduled for this coming week, and a couple that are still waiting for confirmation.
7) AB meeting planning - We need to talk about this at every meeting from now until it happens.
8) Review of NSF report Mark: I compiled all the data that people entered. People please review this and then after Tom reviews this we can submit.
Summary
Employee survey development and piloting - We reviewed the survey item by item and agreed on points to be edited as we went along. - The survey is ready to be piloted and we will review the results from the piolot before making any more changes. - For the pilot surveys there will be a sentence at the introduction about completing some more questions about the survey itself. - Cindee/Tammy will make the changes to the survey to have it ready for the pilot at Cascade
Evaluation discussion. (See email from Mark Jenness)
Interview Process: Employer Contact List - The last version of the list reflects the engineering disciplines that the companies are hiring for as listed on their websites and companies that hire from LCC and/or MSU. - Some disciplines do not appear listed because they might not have been listed in the opening positions for a particular company. - There is ambiguity in the descriptions and different companies described their positions differently from others. - It is important to note that this list is only internal information to help us inform the representation of our sample for interview/survey purposes. - Based on this level of research I believe that we can make a determination about which 25 new want to approach.
Action Items CSW: - Cindee/Tammy will make the changes to the survey to have it ready for the pilot at Cascade - Taryn/ Cindee; to compile a suggested list of 25 companies to approach and invite to participate in the interview/survey process. MSU: - Mark will contact mark J. to organize the evaluation meeting. |
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