Lakehead University occupies a unique position with respect to transfer programs for Engineering students within the province of Ontario. For more than 50 years, Lakehead has been offering both Engineering diploma and degree credentials, the latter designed purposefully to integrate diploma graduates in block transfer programming.
A diploma in Engineering technology was first offered at the Lakehead College of Arts, Science and Technology in 1957. In the late 1960s, a unique degree credential was introduced that built directly on this foundation. Remaining true to its roots of vocation-based technical engineering, the post-diploma Engineering Transfer Program is one of the longest standing block transfer pathways in Ontario in any discipline. Student enrolment in the transfer program has averaged over 500 students a year for the last five years.
The number of students and the age of the program has resulted in a rich legacy of data that can guide the development of best practices as we move into an era of greater student mobility informed by student and societal expectations.
New analytical techniques that are designed to deal with big data sets and are capable of merging qualitative and quantitative information such as Structural Equation Modelling and Machine Learning Algorithms, including Self Organizing Mapping, provide powerful tools to help us identify key indicators of trends relating to transfer, variables in transfer student success and overarching themes in relation to post-secondary student mobility.
While the overarching goal of this project was to identify variables of success for block transfer students in Lakehead University’s Engineering Program, in gathering and analyzing over ten years of historic data that included multiple variables at various stages of the students’ participation in the Engineering Transfer Program at Lakehead, the Project Team also identified opportunities and lessons learned to inform ongoing data collection and analysis related to transfer students at Lakehead University and more broadly throughout the Ontario system.