Applied Research Projects

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14639/2114

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    A study of the composition and effect of educational program streams of students within NAIT's Department of Media Innovation and Communication Technologies
    (Cape Breton University, 2025-04-01) Muri, Wade
    This document contains a study of the composition and effect of educational program streams of students within NAIT's Department of Media Innovation and Communication Technologies. NAIT is a publicly funded Alberta-based post-secondary polytechnic institution in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The primary objective of this study was to provide an analysis of student data within different educational program streams and assess how these academic programs effect student employment and income over five years. An analysis of two distinct yet related data sets was completed to achieve the primary objective. NAIT's Office of the Registrar provided the first data set, and NAIT's Office of Institutional Research provided the second. The data sets spanned five years of historical student information. These data sets represented students within the Fall 2012 to Spring 2017 academic years (Registrar's Office) and the student survey data within the same period (Institutional Research). As part of this primary objective, the researcher included findings related to inequities regarding employment opportunity, gender and age relative to findings within the literature review. A secondary objective of this study was to provide a foundational framework for understanding the global Creative Industries landscape and the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) Industries within a Canadian context. Understanding the composition of the Creative Industries compared and contrasted with the Interactive Digital Media Industries was necessary to develop an understanding of the taxonomy supporting the analysis contained within this study and assist future research in building from the work addressing the primary objective of this study. It is important to note that the primary objective is associated with a need to understand why differences may exist across different disciplines within the IDM Industries; as such, this secondary objective was introduced as an integral component of this document. Within this secondary objective, this study has set a foundation for further research, including investigating gender and age imbalances and associated earnings potential in creative, technical, and business fields. As governmental programs have been deployed to support growth within the Creative and IDM Industries (Bae & Yoo, 2015; Cunningham & McCutcheon, 2021; O’Connor, 2010, 2013; Thompson & Campbell, 2022), this objective is an important component within a Community Economic Development framework to help inform stakeholders as they are not always equitable for individuals working within these economic areas (Abbasi et al., 2017; Hartley et al., 2017; Oakley, 2004).