The LRNT 527 course has allowed me to expand the tools we can offer to students in an Experiential Context of Co-op and Career Education at UVic. My fellow instructor and I are implementing a new AI tool in our first-year preparatory course for undergraduate engineers to allow for a quick “real-time” assessment of their resume documents. We have seen the student’s cognition of material they learn in the first year (basic resume writing skills) deteriorate between 1st year and 2nd year. Thus, most students constantly need reviews after reviewing their applications, so they feel comfortable applying for co-op/career positions independently. We had hoped this new tool would take care of the “low-hanging fruit” on the resumes (spelling, margins, specific order/format, etc.) that usually takes away from the time we as practitioners have with our students when we meet. As staff numbers remain the same and class sizes continue to grow, this AI tool is hoped to provide us with enough “in-demand or “in-time” learning that our students desperately demand. We cannot offer to the entire student population in one-on-one meetings alone. It will also allow us, as Work Integrated Learning specialists, the time to focus on more critical issues in a student’s resume, such as competency statements and development in the resume. As the research for the tool and the LRNT 527 course progressed, additional positive notes of assessing a student resume using AI emerged, such as providing a competitive edge to our student population in their resume writing abilities. Companies that hire our students, such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple, use ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) similar to the AI tool we purchased from a software vendor. We hope that students take advantage of the tool to grow their resumes, especially for larger companies that use AI to pull top candidates from pools of resumes they receive each hiring semester.

Future work will be required to investigate whether or not the tool effectively improves students’ resumes. This can be based on various areas, such as the Quantitative data of the number of interviews/hires companies will make to our students before and after using the AI assessment tool. We will also be allowing students in the first-year course to have their documents assessed by the AI before submitting them to the course for grading (there is a resume and cover letter assignment in the course marked by instructors/TAs, using a predetermined rubric). We can then compare the grades from previous semesters where the AI was not used to assess student assignments to those in the Fall 2022 Resume Assignments.

We are still awaiting final approvals from the ethics application on using student data. If the tool does prove successful, the first-year class will not be the only ones allowed to venture into the realm of Artificial Intelligence.

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