 My name is Dr. Holly Cattelfamel and I coordinate the Human Resources Management Graduate Certificate and the Bachelor of Business Administration Human Resources Degree Programs at Niagara College. I've been here about 14 years and I've been in a coordinator role for approximately 12 of those years and much of my time is spent working with my students to support them from a transition to employment. The broad strategy within the School of Business and Management and also specifically within the Human Resources Program is all about industry connections and as I said we're always looking for opportunities to involve industry not only in the classroom but external to the classroom. So it could involve course-based projects, it could involve having a guest speaker in like I did last night, we were able to have one of the best employment lawyers in the Niagara Peninsula come in and speak to over 40 HR students or it can be through preparing and coaching and mentoring students for their internship or co-op experiences. Several years ago now, I'm going to say about four years ago, I had the opportunity through our international department to connect with a Jamaican businessman and his name is Christopher Ramson who owns an import-export business and a manufacturing facility in Kingston and in the Montego Bay area and it occurred to me and my colleague in the international department, we're doing some really cool things in terms of course-based applied projects or course-based research projects, wouldn't it be a wonderful opportunity to connect with an international partner and through the connection with our international office I made a built relationship with the company Chassie Ramson Company and my desire was to give my students an international experience without necessarily having to leave the Niagara area. Christopher was extremely excited, he's the managing director, he was extremely excited about the opportunity to work with a Canadian institution and through lots of emails and conference calls back and forth, we decided that my students in the human resources program would design learning programs that would meet some of the gaps that he had within his organization. There is an instructional design process that we follow in training and development and one of the first steps is of course doing a needs assessment. So we were able to through Skype bring Christopher into the classroom, have the students conduct a needs assessment, identify various gaps within his organization and then over the course of the term students went off and designed learning modules with regular connections with the partner which is a very important part of the process, my role being the coach and the mentor making sure the students are on track. So that was the first project that I did and as we ended the term or towards the end of the term Christopher and I got to talking and we thought it would be wonderful if one of our HR students could actually go to Jamaica as part of their internship requirement which is a 300 hour internship and support the business to actually implement the course-based projects to move these training programs forward and we were both very enthusiastic about it and I put it out to the students and said hey, this is something that some of you might be interested in and with the support of our international department we were able to go through a recruitment process, the HR professionals so we want to make sure that we follow the process as appropriately and we identified individuals, we had two individuals that were to go down and actually work on implementing the process, supporting their HR programs and policies and procedures and it was an absolutely amazing experience for everybody. So the plan is to continue to work internationally with with project partners. I had had the experience prior to the Jamaica experience I was working with a group of Brazilian researchers in in various locations in Brazil on a research evaluation project and I had brought my students at that point to work on a project for our Brazilian partners as well as a course based project. We didn't we didn't have it was sort of in its infancy so I had done that before and I knew that it had great potential so after I had worked with Christopher and had such an amazing experience and the student had an amazing experience he actually referred me to another one of his colleagues another food company which is called Walkers Wood. They manufacture jerk sauces and chutneys and things like that and so we did it the following year with Christopher's also as a project partner but also with the Walkers Wood family and we did that for a couple of years so yes the intention for me is to continue wherever possible and as it fits with the curriculum to integrate not only course-based projects with internships but adding that international component because as as we know our our students are global citizens intercultural competency and the ability to relate effectively with people across the world will absolutely set them up for success when they become graduates. There's sort of two different pieces here the one assessment would be related to the project itself and it's it's a it's a big deal like it's a big project for four students so the assessment starts the day classes start if you will in terms of formulate formulating expectations linking the expectations with respect to the deliverables right back to the learning objectives and the vocational learning outcomes that are set forth in the course outline and making sure that they understand that at the end of this process it's extremely important for them to understand that they're working towards the ultimate goal of fulfilling these learning outcomes so when I say the assessment starts day one I think setting super clear expectations for not only the students but for the industry partners and for me as the as the coach and the mentor along the way. What I've integrated into the process is a staged approach to the project so a phase one phase two phase three where I'm able to do milestone checks that are part of the assessment mechanism so that I can see where they're at and give them direct concrete feedback like I said at three stages during the process and that has been invaluable in terms of catching people who are sort of going off the rails a little bit and bringing them back back on at the end of the experience. We have in general we have our industry partners participate in the culminating experience which is where the learning modules that the students are developing are shared with the industry partner. I have the students involved in the providing anecdotal assessment with respect to one another's projects so that they are able to learn that skill in terms of how they can provide feedback to one another in a safe and respectful environment and in terms of assessing the project as a whole it's not only the content piece of course the quality of the output is evaluated vis-a-vis the learning outcomes but also the team process is assessed throughout. Students are asked to conduct a reflective summary of the experience which is generally a one to two page summary with key questions about how the process has helped them to evolve as a professional.