Performance of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology ( BSIT ) Students in their Onthe-Job Training ( OJT ) for the Academic Year 2016-2017

Students’ performance in their respective On-the-Job Training (OJT) is one of the success stories that may provide significant contribution to the total effectiveness of the curriculum designed and participated by stakeholders from various industry representation. Students were deployed in different companies to gain knowledge, skills, attitudes, and actual working experience for them to become more competitive upon completion of training and serve as input for their future career in his/her chosen field. This study aimed to assess and evaluate the OJT performance of BSIT students in their respective companies for Academic Year 2016-2017. Descriptive-survey research was employed in this study. A total of 58 students were selected to represent as the main respondents of the study. Findings revealed that their OJT performance was at “Very Satisfactory” level. The study recommended that the College of Computer Studies may establish a strong partnership and linkages with various companies, especially those with IT departments which accept student-trainees.


Introduction
On-the-job training, also known as OJT, is teaching the skills, knowledge, and competencies that are needed for employees to perform a specific job within the workplace and work environment.Employees learn in an environment in which they will need to practice the knowledge and skills taught in the on-the-job training (Heathfield, 2016).
Exposure to actual working environment plays an important role in the development of future professionals in various fields of specialization.Thru this, numbered higher education institutions (HEIs) is establishing their best to provide an effective OJT program integrated and implemented in some of their curricular offerings.
Any organization that wants to succeed, and to continue to succeed, has to maintain workforce consisting of people who are willing to learn and develop continuously.Training and developing human capital is tremendously important in the effective management and maintenance of a skilled workforce.Training is one of the ways of improving organization's effectiveness.In order to implement right training methods, organization should be aware of the training methods and their effectiveness (Alipour, 2009).
The College of Computer Studies (CCS) of Laguna State Polytechnic University-Los Baños Campus (LSPU-LBC) offers Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSIT) degree program that incorporates OJT in the curriculum.Students were deployed in different companies to render their Practicum or OJT which lasted for four hundred ninety (490) hours.
This study was conceptualized to assess and evaluate the performance of BSIT students that had undergone OJT in their respective companies.Furthermore, the study will provide significant information that may serve as good input to the continuous improvement and effective delivery of the CCS' OJT Program and to other curricular programs of the University-Campus as well.

Research Objectives, Questions and Hypotheses
The main objective of this study is to assess and evaluate the performance of BSIT students in their OJT for the Academic Year 2016-2017 and the following questions were answered: 1. What is the respondent's socio-demographic profile in terms of Age, Gender, Company Name, and Department?

Research Methodology
The research design implemented in this study is the Descriptive-Survey.This design was adopted by the researchers for they strongly believed that this was the most suited and appropriate in analyzing and interpreting the data collected and to eventually come up with better findings, conclusions, and recommendations.
The respondents of this study are the conveniently selected fourth year BSIT students that had successfully completed their OJT and attended the College' General Assembly Meeting.Moreover, this utilized the Performance Evaluation Sheet and Program Assessment Questionnaire as its main instruments to solicit the data needed for analysis and interpretations.
Furthermore, the researchers had used various statistical tests of the measurement and validation of the research questions and hypotheses.The frequency counts of the respondents' level of performance in OJT seen in Table 5 described that 46.55% (27/58) of the respondents obtained "Very Satisfactory" performance, followed by "Excellent" performance at 37.93% (22/58), next is 12.07% (7/58) at "Satisfactory" performance and 2 or 3.45% at "Passed" performance.Although both the mean performances of the students in terms of Department was at "Very Satisfactory" level, those who completed their OJT in Non-IT (mean=94.49)showed a slight higher mean over Non-IT with the mean of 92.56.

Results and Discussion
Moreover, the computed mean score on the overall performance of the respondents was 93.86 and this implies that the respondents were "Very Satisfactory" on their OJT performance in their assigned company workplace.The OJT Program of CCS was assessed by the respondents and the results were shown in Table 6.In terms of Personal, the respondents obtained the mean of 4.46 interpreted as "Extremely Satisfied," followed by Company with the mean of 4.33 interpreted as "Extremely Satisfied," and College with the mean of 4.19 interpreted as "Very Satisfied." The computed overall mean was 4.49 interpreted as "Very Satisfied" and this dictates that the respondents were "Very Satisfied" on the implementation delivery of the OJT Program of the College of Computer Studies.The respondents were asked about their overall assessment on the Effectiveness of OJT Program of CCS, the summary of their responses were seen in Table 7.The highest frequency of 28 (48.28%)goes to "Very Effective," this is followed by "Slightly Effective" with 16 (27.59%)counts, and 14 (24.14%)responses of "Effective." The overall computed mean for effectiveness was 4.21 interpreted as "Effective," this implies that the respondents assessed the OJT Program of CCS to be "Effective."Seen in Table 8 is the correlation between the respondent's socio-demographic profile and OJT Performance Score and it shown that the Company Name (Comp_Name) displays a negative significant relationship with the Performance Score in terms of Dependability (r=-.323,p=.013) this entails that the students' performance in their chosen company may lead to better performance in terms of Dependability.
Further, the correlation shown a negative relationship due to the fact that majority of the companies identified in this study are Non-IT and students themselves are responsible in finding/seeking for their place of internships.

2.
What is the respondent's mean assessment on the OJT Program of CCS in terms of College, Company, Personal and Over-all?3. What is the respondent's performance evaluation score in terms of Job Knowledge, Dependability, Communication Skills, Conduct, Initiative and Creativity, Cooperatives and Relationship and Attendance and Punctuality?4. What is the respondent's level of performance in OJT? 5. What is the respondent's over-all perception on the level of effectiveness of OJT Program of CCS? 6.Is there any significant relationship between the respondent's sociodemographic profile and mean assessment of the OJT Program of CCS in terms of College, Company, Personal, and Over-all?7. Is there any significant relationship between the respondent's sociodemographic profile and performance evaluation score in terms of Job Knowledge, Dependability, Communication Skills, Conduct, Initiative and Creativity, Cooperatives and Relationship and Attendance and Punctuality?8. Is there any significant relationship between the respondent's sociodemographic profile and level of performance in OJT? 9. Is there any significant relationship between the respondent's mean assessment of the OJT Program of CCS and performance evaluation score in terms of Job Knowledge, Dependability, Communication Skills, Conduct, Initiative and Creativity, Cooperatives and Relationship and Attendance and Punctuality?10.Do the following singly or in combination predict the respondent's over-all perception on the level of effectiveness of OJT Program of CCS: a. Socio-demographic Profile, b.Program Assessment, c. Performance Evaluation?Based on the above questions, the following hypotheses were derived and tested at 5% level of significance: 1.There is no significant relationship between the respondent's sociodemographic profile and mean assessment of the OJT Program of CCS in terms of College, Company, Personal, and Over-all.2. There is no significant relationship between the respondent's sociodemographic profile and performance evaluation score in terms of Job Knowledge, Dependability, Communication Skills, Conduct, Initiative and Creativity, Cooperatives and Relationship and Attendance and Punctuality.3.There is no significant relationship between the respondent's sociodemographic profile and level of performance in OJT. 4.There is no significant relationship between the respondent's mean assessment of the OJT Program of CCS and performance evaluation score in terms of Job Knowledge, Dependability, Communication Skills, Conduct, Initiative and Creativity, Cooperatives and Relationship and Attendance and Punctuality? 5. None among the following singly or in combination predict the respondent's over-all perception on the level of effectiveness of OJT Program of CCS: a. Socio-demographic Profile, b.Program Assessment, c. Performance Evaluation.

Table 1 .
Age Distribution of the Respondents From the total population of 119 officially enrolled students in OJT for Academic Year 2016-2017 fifty-eight (58) was conveniently selected as target respondents.The socio-demographic profile of the respondents, Table1showed that the highest frequency in terms of Age was 20 years old and that represents twenty-three (23/58 or 39.66%) of the total respondents which comprises of twelve (12) males and eleven (11) females.Depicted in Table4are the performance mean scores of the respondents based on the evaluation done by their respective immediate supervisors.On the maximum score of 15, the highest mean score goes to Cooperatives and Relationship with 14.68 followed by Conduct with the mean score of 14.59.Moreover, with the maximum score of 10, Attendance and Punctuality obtained the score of 9.24.

Table 7 .
Frequency of Over-all Level of Effectiveness of OJT Program OverallMean = 4.21, "Effective"

Table 8 .
Correlation between Socio-demographic Profile and OJT Program Assessment

Table 9 .
Correlation between Socio-demographic Profile and Performance Score

Table 10 .
Correlation between Socio-demographic Profile and OJT Performance Level

Table 11 .
Correlation between OJT Program Assessment and Performance ScoreSeen in Table11is the correlation between the OJT Program Assessment and Performance Score, it revealed that the company (r=-.621,p=.047) shown a negative significant relationship with the performance in terms of dependability.This revealed that the students' performance in terms of Dependability contributed to the better assessment of the College' OJT Program in terms of Company.