Job Shadowing to Investigate Specialty Areas of Construction

Introduction

Job shadowing is the experience of spending a day or more with someone to observe their working environment. It is “an academically motivating activity design to give kids an up-close look at the world of work and answer the question, ‘Why do I have to learn this?’”(www.jobshadow.org/about_program/about_program.html) During the job shadow a student has the opportunity to “watch, ask questions, practice people skills, and make valuable contacts” (Mariani, 1998). Students believe that experience enhances their education. This is shown in the U.S. World and News Report’s annual college surveys results that found students felt that their learning was enhanced by Internships, Co-ops, Creative Projects and Service Learning programs (U.S. News Report, 2002). The internship is designed to bring the expertise of industry and academia to focus a student’s progress from novice to productive over their education (Adcox, 2000). The field trip and job shadowing activities allow the students to have a smaller experience before a commitment has been made for an internship.  At Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), an assignment has been developed in the Mechanical Building Systems Course (ART284) to help the students identify and become more aware of not just their job shadow, but the presented job shadows of classmates on jobs related to mechanical construction. A job shadow assignment is fulfilled during the semester by the student spending a minimum of one half day with a person working in a field related to mechanical construction, and presenting the experience to the class. The students shared their realistic job observations so the class could understand more detailed information about this specific area of construction.

Specialty construction companies include mechanical, electrical and residential construction. Most construction technology / engineering programs in the United States do not have the resources to teach additional courses in these areas, but the use of job shadowing and the reporting back to the class, sharing with others, will enhance the student’s opportunities for learning more about these specialized areas without the need for additional resources in a department. The industry would also be opening doors for students to get a better understanding of their specific field while making initial contacts with industry to generate the interest of future employees. The following will show how job shadowing is used and demonstrate an example of the job shadowing assignment, assessment and presentation.

Job Shadowing Examples in K - 12

Examples of job shadowing at young ages abound in educational literature. Many look at it as a long-term solution to work force shortages. As grade school students begin to express interest in a career, it is important to help them explore their interests and continue connecting school activities to real world work. Job shadowing as career exploration has been a part of many junior and senior high programs. Schools with formal programs follow steps like the ones below to establish successful programs.

      1.        Interest survey of students to identify what kind of jobs they might want to do.

2.        Matching the students with the volunteer job host person.

3.        Orientation activities to assist in professional etiquette and job specific safety.

4.        Student confirmation and parental permission, if necessary.

5.        The shadow experience complete with student inquiry what they expect to see during the job shadow.

6.        Follow up with a thank you letter and a discussion with the student about their experience.

During this process the students observed normal duties for different occupations through real-life experiences (Mariani, 1998).

Job shadowing can make an impact on the concern that traditionally children know only the occupations of people that they see; parents, teachers, and television, are just some of the most predominant. Television can affect the view of a student in either direction. The Enron Corp. and Arthur Anderson LLP have introduced kids to the accounting profession, but with a very negative twist (Lee, 2002). The medical industry is also showing downturns because of students see the long hours, paperwork and insurance problems related to being a doctor instead of the old glory days of Marcus Welby M.D. being the greatest image of the vital person to help people (USA Today, 2002).

Industry is now seeing the need of getting onboard to assist students in investigating their industry to demonstrate a positive outlook on their specific industry. The St. Louis Council on Construction Consumers have started speaking with students as young as second grade to get them interested in the area of construction and dispel their misconceptions of the industry (Lee, 2002). The belief is that the younger students can be more easily influenced because they have less preconceived notions. In Chicago, the Associated Equipment Distributors (AED) Foundation has teamed up with the National Center on Education and Economy (NCEE) to propose a national model to be used to introduce inner city high school students into their industry (Clark, 1999). Companies like Caterpillar and Komatsu are interested in this model so they can fill shortages of skilled labor. This is an important investment for industry to interact with students at an early level so the students are engrossed in the career at an early age.

Another job shadowing technique has been named “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” (The Indianapolis Star, 2002). Boys have actually been added to this day in the Indianapolis, Indiana area. This activity not only opens barriers for non-traditional occupations of females, but many companies allow the students to actually participate in the daily activities so they can apply their school knowledge to real world activities. This allows the students to not only learn the facts about what a person does, but it also demonstrates workplace skills related to customer service, teamwork and professionalism.

The largest development of the job shadowing for all ages is the National Job Shadow Coalition formed in Washington, D.C. in 1998 has appropriately been connected to a famous shadow of Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog (Lozoda, 2001). National Job Shadow day occurred on February 2, 2003 and testimonials are now available on the website at www.jobshadow.org.  They include experiences from Secretary of State Colin Powell, Office of Vocational and Adult Education and a meteorologist at WTTG in Washington D. C. (www.jobshadow.org/current_news/newsletter23.html). Most of these students were in high school, but this application can also assist students in higher education experience their future career.

Job Shadowing in Higher Education

There are many current examples of job shadowing in higher education, but they concentrate in a few specialties of medicine or education. The best example of job shadowing in higher education is sometimes called a clinical, where the students actually follow the mentor around and assist as part of the class time. This is demonstrated in the medical or dentist schools where the students observe in the office or visit patients in a hospital. Another version of this is the “student teaching” aspect of education programs. The traditional process of education teachers was to complete 3 ½ years of school and then teach in a classroom for the last semester. Unfortunately, students who finally made it into the classroom became aware that the classroom was not exactly they had been expected. This phenomenon occurred in many programs teaching education. The School of Education at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, as one example, rearranged the schedule of students entering the classroom to include the 1^st year students actually observing and participating in the classroom. This eliminates the problem of a student feeling that 4 years of college was wasted as they stepped into the real world and hated the expectation of their job. As students were introduced to the classroom in the first semester of undergraduate education, they understood why they needed to learn about child psychology or learning styles and could picture the real world environment of a classroom while learning theories in academia.

A report by Matthew Mariani explaining examples in higher education shared some Indiana University, Bloomington, IN students’ experiences with job shadowing (1998). Kathryn was a student interested in broadcast journalism so she visited a television station in Indianapolis. Her first shadow was with a producer and her reaction was “Wow he has a stressful job”. The next person she followed was an intern reporter where she experienced the reality of low pay, tight deadlines and limited job security (Mariani, 1998). This is the experience that students need to have when they are exploring their careers. They were able to make professional contacts in their career field and understand the meaning behind their degree program.

Model of Job Shadow for Mechanical Construction

In many areas of technology and engineering, students are given basic information about design, but they do not always reach the level of understanding necessary to apply the specific knowledge to an actual construction project. A mechanical systems course in a construction curriculum is an excellent example of this gap between information and the application of knowledge. The students learn how to design water lines, drain piping, heating systems or air conditioning ductwork, but they are not sure of who would really be responsible for the daily activities in mechanical construction. When we enter the area of mechanical systems in construction technology or construction management, we are less likely to be “designing” systems, but more likely we would be supervising the design and installation to produce the end result of a structure. The structure could be a house, an office building or the building material product.

To assist the students in applying knowledge learned in the class, an assignment was made for them to shadow someone in the mechanical construction industry for a minimum of one half day. The original purpose of this assignment was to help students:

1.         Validate that the topical information of the course was applicable to real life situations.

2.         Experience the daily tasks necessary to understand the mechanical systems of a building.

3.         To experience different types of construction projects specifically related to mechanical construction

4.         To develop a deeper understanding of responsibilities in the area of mechanical construction. 

The initial design of the assignment is shown in Appendix A. The assignment sheet was very basic and outlined some of the minimum criteria to be documented during the visit. The main topics that are to be covered include: Company profile, Project Profile, and Daily Tasks. A timeline is shown at the bottom of the assignment sheet to insure that the student is making progress and assist, if necessary, the finding of a mentor. Since mechanical construction is one of the least understood areas, representatives of that industry are always pleased to show off their business and it has not been an issue to find mentors.

 The assignment is given out the first day of class when the syllabus is being reviewed. The deliverable of the assignment is to produce progress at week 6 and produce a presentation to the class during the last sessions of the semester. The assignment fulfills the learning outcomes:

1.         The ability of the students to communicate experiences.

2.         The integration of knowledge, community and professionalism in their lives.

3.         The ability of the students to example and analyze the discipline.

A rubric, shown in Appendix B, outlines how the assignment will be graded and where the points are distributed. The emphasis is on the value of sharing the experience with other students. The sharing process reinforces the elusive aspects of the interpersonal experience that the student misses in the typical classroom environment. Since the careers in construction are very vast, it seems efficient to let students encounter the many diverse experiences of their classmates.

The outcomes of the class produced a deeper understanding of the mechanical systems in a building and how they are applied in real world experiences.  The student presentations are given in the last few meetings of the class. The presentation itself is the sole description of the experience and it has been defined by the assignment sheet and rubric. Including questions about presentations on the final exam to encourage student participation during the presentations.

Examples of Job Shadowing Presentations

The presentations for the job shadow were given in the final 5 periods of the course. The students were required to use a PowerPoint presentation and include photographs or other graphics. They were excused from photographs when they did not have permission from the mentor. There were instances when photos were not permitted due to owner restrictions on a project. One example of this is when a student visited an industrial, pharmaceutical facility where the process was patented so no photos were allowed.

With the permission of students, some examples (Table 1) of students’ job shadow experiences have been provided.

 The samples given above are an overview of the presentations in the class. Some were excellent and really helped the students learn more about the area of mechanical construction and reinforced the real world connection to the mechanical systems taught in the class. Other students were lacking the details necessary to assist in expanding student learning. 

Conclusions

 As with all new assignments, the process has generated ideas for improvement to increase the student participation and learning outcomes. There were some presentations that did not seem to fulfill the requirements but it is not clear if that is because the students did not understand the directions or just did not follow the directions given. The assignment did give enlightenment to students. The best example of this was the comment by a student visiting a sewage treatment plant who told the class that it didn’t smell bad like he thought it would. Gathering data from the class a list of participating contractors can be provided for future students’ use. The best presentations were with contractors who were alumni or who would be interested in hiring students. About 10 % of the students interviewed craft type mechanical workers with little or no education. The general reaction to this ranged from “I want to do more than that so I will stay in school” to “ wow they make enough money, I could do that now.” This would be an area of improvement for future assignments by adding points for making the job shadow more applicable to the course materials. A job shadow with a CEO who does not visit a job site might have fewer points than someone who actually assisted a project manager with daily tasks. Encourage the students to make the most of the job shadow by using points as an incentive.

The students did seem to have a better understanding of what mechanical systems did and how they worked in different types of buildings. They were able to smell and touch things during their job shadow that are unavailable to those who remain in a classroom. They listened and viewed photographs of the systems as students presented their shadow experience.  The students articulated course topics and explained them in settings of the real world. One example of this learning experience is that many students had pictures of a chiller and cooling tower, but the projects ranged from museums to hospitals to commercial office buildings. It makes the systems become less generic because they had actual project examples to compare to the information given in class in the form of system schematics or field trips.

Table 1

 Student Example # 1, excellent presentation, good learning experience.

Student Example # 2, Great presentation, excellent learning experience

Student Example # 3, below average presentation, poor learning experience

The research cited in this paper gives great examples of where formal programs are in place to assist students. The assistance to the students ranges from second graders learning to appreciate an occupation to college students shadowing to see actual daily job tasks (Mariani, 1998).  There are now formal instruments produced by a national push toward job shadowing that teacher and industry have access to in www.jobshadow.org.  The assignment for the mechanical construction course is just one model that can be used to explore more specific systems or areas of a program. Preparing a presentation and sharing it with the class makes the project beneficial to the entire course population. The industry representatives participating in the job shadows were very positive with the students and were hopeful that some would become interested in their area of mechanical construction. This may be a future way to market some specialized industries by making the shadow program more defined and more interconnected to internship programs.

Negative comments by the students included the compliant that the process takes too much time. This is always an issue for outside projects in courses at IUPUI because it is an urban school where 97% of the students commute to campus and over 70% have jobs. There are now resources available for investigating jobs online, so perhaps some virtual job shadowing could also occur. Technology is continually advancing, live Internet cameras on jobsites is just one of the tools that are being introduced that could assist in the job shadowing of the future. The exposure of job shadowing is one more way to add relevance and “real life” situations to a classroom with minimal resources from instructors and a positive outreach to the local industry.

References

 Adcox, John W. (2000, Summer). Measuring complex achievement; the construction management internship. Journal of Construction Education, 5(2). 104-115.

http://www.jobshadow.org Researched on September 30 2002.

Lee, T. (2002, April 30). Industries aim to influence students’ career choices as a matter of survival. [Electronic version} St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Lozada, M. (2001). Job shadowing; Career exploration at work [Electronic version] Techniques, 76(8). 30-33.

Mariani, M. (1998). Job shadowing for college students. [Electronic version]. Occupational Outlook Quarterly, 42(2). 46-49.

Mariani, M. (1998). Job shadowing in junior and senior high school. [Electronic version]. Occupational Outlook Quarterly, 42(2). 42-45.

 The Indianapolis Star, (2002, April 25). Daughters to work day widens horizons in Indianapolis. Retrieved September 20, 2002 from http://web16.epnet.com/citation.asp

US News Report (2002, August). America’s best colleges 2003. Retrieved September 27, 2002, from http://www.usnews.com/edu/college/rangkings.

Appendix A

ART 284 MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTION - OUTLINE FOR SHADOW PROGRAM 

 100 POINTS POSSIBLE

Job Shadowing is done to understand the everyday knowledge and tasks necessary to be a mechanical contractor.  This experience not only helps each student understand what the mechanical contractor does, but each student will give a presentation about what they have learned to the class after Thanksgiving break. This should include at a minimum, not to be limited to, the following

 Basic Criteria of job shadow:

 Company profile:

Name of company, owners, history, size of projects, number of workers, type of workers, education level of workers, recruiting of company, etc.

Person Profile:

·         Name of person, years of experience, type of projects, education level, hours of work per week, etc.

 Project profile: (if applicable)

Name of projects, size, number of work hours, current status of work, estimated time of completion, photos if possible.

Daily tasks:

A day in the life should include the skills that the person uses daily, i.e. communication, writing, reading blueprints, estimating, supervising, training, scheduling, hands on fabricating, drawing, drafting, instructing, etc.

 Deliverables for your Job Shadow Assignment

Week 6

a.        You will receive 10 points to investigate the companies and turn in a list by Sept 30 as part of the assignment. You should have research some companies and said if you have contacted any.

Week 14 and 15

a.        You will be required to give a Minimum of 5 minutes and Maximum of 8 minutes presentation to the class using PowerPoint.

b.       You will be required to give each student a one-page handout outlining your presentation. There are approximately 34 people in your class.

c.        You will be required to give the instructor handout copies of your power point presentation.

d.       The PowerPoint should include all basic criteria for Power Point items above for information and be in a format with graphics, including all information above and within the proper time limit.

Appendix B