"No, I'm not the secretary": Using participatory methods to explore women engineering students experiences on co-op.

Studies exploring engineering students' experiences with cooperative education (co-op) typically utilize traditional quantitative and qualitative methods to focus on overall outcomes as opposed to individual voices. As a result of this, women's experiences in a co-op environment are rarely captured. Historically, women are underrepresented in engineering undergraduate programs, and this can lead to feelings of isolation and low self-efficacy, which, in turn, can lead to attrition. Participatory action research (PAR) not only highlights marginalized voices, but also empowers participants. The current study implements group-level assessment (GLA), a large-group PAR method, to study the co-op experiences of women in engineering at a large US research institution. During the GLA, participants developed an action plan to improve co-op experiences for women in order to improve retention and help future women succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]