INTERROGATING STUDENT WORK RELATED LEARNING EXPERIENCES AT ASELECTED UNIVERSITY IN ZIMBABWE

Abstract

The study sought to explore students’ experiences and perceptions in
order to unravel the challenges that students face as they go through their work related
learning (WRL). The study employed a mixed research design approach with
questionnaires and semi-structured interviews used as data collecting instruments. Two
faculties which have an industrial attachment component as part of their curricula were
involved in the study. The two faculties have a total of nine hundred and three (903)
students, with seven hundred and three (703) already on attachment while the
remainder have completed the attachment programme. Respondents’ class lists were
taken as strata while gender was also considered as a stratifying criterion. Stratified
random sampling was used to come up with a representative sample of a hundred and
fifty (150) students on whom the questionnaires were administered. Purposive sampling
was used to locate interview respondents. The study established that students found it
difficult to secure places for industrial attachment owing to the under performance of
the economy and, consequently, some of them ended up settling for inappropriate
attachment places in which they failed to get the requisite minimum functional exposure
and were, more often than not, taken as sources of cheap labour. The major functional
challenges faced by many of the students were the lack of information and computer
technology (ICT) skills and business communication skills which resulted in the
students having difficulty in adapting to the host companies’ operating systems. The
study also established that many of the students received little or no remuneration in
terms of allowances from the host organisations during their period of attachment and
had to grapple with travel and subsistence challenges. Amongst the numerous
recommendations suggested, was the proposal to cover the WRL program under the
Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund.