An online course for professional development of chemical engineering COOPs and interns

An online course was created for professional development of chemical engineering students participating in industrial cooperative education and internships. The course guides students through a series of exercises each designed to cycle through the four stages of Kolb's learning theory: experience, reflection, generalization, and experimentation. Students naturally acquire concrete professional experience while practicing in an industrial setting. Instead of a traditional approach to coop education that concludes the industry experience with a reflective report, our approach uses small reflective exercises distributed throughout the coop/internship period that focus on a set of professional competencies. Students complete Kolb's cycle using the key process steps of project management as a laboratory of generalization and experimentation with professional skills. It was concluded that students accelerated their professional development with periodic reflection and experimentation along with timely assessment and feedback from the instructor.