Confirmation of Candidature - Impact Evaluation of co-Curricular Activities in the Surveying Careers Pipeline

The skills shortage in Surveying is well documented across a number of countries. Various attempts have been made to address the issue of the skills shortage in surveying over the years. In Australia and New Zealand, Williamson (1997) examined the history of surveying looking for future solutions, while Hannah et al (2000) looked to determine whether a name change for surveying and degrees might be the solution. Ristevski and Williamson (2001) examined regulatory reform and explored how changes might provide opportunities for growth, and a heavyweight group of surveying academics looked at the challenges being faced in the higher education sector (McDougall, Williamson, Bellman & Rizos, 2006). Mahoney et al (2009) explored whether the solution was the way in which we were educating the public. Internationally, the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) turned to their Young Surveyors group, who explored how young surveyors might integrate more readily with their older peers (Kivilcim & McAlister, 2008). 

It is fair to say that the problem has been assessed from a multitude of angles, but to date there has been no evaluation of the body of work where all the individuals, organisations and educational institutions spend a significant amount of time and energy - in developing and delivering co-curricular activities and initiatives pre higher education - in an attempt to influence career decision making to attract people into the surveying career pipeline. The literature is silent on any analytics of the efficacy of these activities and initiatives. In short, we have been able to determine the size of the hole, but not what an effective plug might look like.

This research aims to bridge this gap; to ultimately develop an evaluation tool that will provide a model to assess the efficacy of Surveying co-curricular education engagement initiatives, activities and programs designed to promote Surveying in career decision making, and to further inform future designs of these kinds of interventions for the surveying careers pipeline.

By utilising an action research methodology, this project will utilise two main research phases to inform the development of the evaluation tool and model. The first phase will identify a number of existing co-curricular interventions, to develop a typology. This will be followed by evaluation of a number of existing models that are applicable to co-curricular activities, including from the fields of education, learning, career decision making, evaluation and others to develop the prototype model, which will then be initially tested against the identified co-curricular interventions. 

The second phase will utilise an impact evaluation of existing surveyors and surveying students to identify seminal moments and triggers that led to them choosing surveying as a profession. This will allow for the development of a model that captures the existing decision making processes, to identify key entry points into the surveying careers pipeline. This will then be combined with the prototype model developed, to further refine it, before publishing the results of the evaluation, as well as the prototype tool.3w

For more information, please email the Graduate Research School or phone 0746 311088.