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The purpose of the project was to implement an inclusive and novel method of getting ‘hard to reach’ students across the Burnley and Pendle region to consider engineering as a career. This was achieved by organising a series of workshops for students utilising the recently developed Advanced Digital Manufacturing Technologies (ADMT) lab at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) Burnley campus, along with industrial visits for students to some leading engineering companies in the region.
This report presents the development of an integrated programme entitled MEng Engineering that will provide an opportunity for engineers already in the workforce to engage with upskilling that can lead to professional recognition.
A web-based tool has been designed to make the design elements of undergraduate courses in New Product Development (NPD) more attractive. It does this by showing how knowledge translates to real products and by providing real life examples of the design process to help students understand and relate to abstract engineering design principles.
It is imperative to ensure that engineering graduates develop the right knowledge and capabilities to navigate the changing role of the engineer. This will only happen through academia and industry collaborating in a more coherent manner, collectively targeting future challenges.
There are significant barriers involved when seeking to modify Mathematics programmes to encourage the development of graduate skills. One barrier is the practical difficulty of finding space for graduate skill development in a crowded curriculum. This can be addressed, at least in part, through different approaches toward learning, teaching and assessment that allow skill development to take place alongside the development of the mathematical skills, and by encouraging students to take part in extra-curricular activities.
A series of short case studies have been collected, each focused on specific graduate skills, providing examples of ways in which these have been successfully developed through curricular initiatives. There is a wide variety of work reported, both in terms of the skills developed as well as the type of courses and institutions involved. The hope and expectation is, therefore, that there will be something of interest and relevance to everyone who has a desire to make curricular changes aimed at improving the ‘graduate’ skill levels of their students.
Existing educational resources for control systems have been refined and new resources have been developed. A new LabVIEW based Control Systems Analysis Toolkit (CSAT) has been developed to assist lecturers in teaching control engineering and students to understand theoretical concepts; specific manual and activity exercises for the CSAT have been developed.
The purpose of this project was to use the Virtual World (VW) of Second Life (SL) to support students in the development of deeper understanding and application of Engineering Project Management (EPM) whilst offering flexibility and continuity of remote access to interactive materials.
This project investigated the extent to which e-portfolio tools can be applied to final year engineering projects with a view to supporting the experience from the perspective of supervisor and student respectively.
This project has supported the development of outreach workshops for delivery by university student volunteers in local schools with the aim of engaging young people from under-represented groups in engineering.
The current project (2011/12) focuses on STEM students at Loughborough and Nottingham. Two students have been recruited at each institution to promote the respective library services and other learning resources. An industrial sponsor, Jaguar Land Rover, is providing a performance-related remuneration package in lieu of a salary. Ideally, the current students would play a part in recruiting their successors in time for a managed hand-over before the end of the academic year. It is expected that the student ambassadors will reinforce the following skills during this project: time management, interpersonal skills, communication skills, leadership and influencing skills.
The purpose of this project was to investigate the application of the concept of ‘community engineering’ as a method of engaging girls and black and minority ethnic school children with STEM subjects.
Engineering Students’ Understanding of Mathematics (ESUM) is a developmental research1 project involving an innovation in teaching designed to achieve a higher level of engagement and conceptual understanding in mathematics for first year engineering students. The innovation has included small group work, a group project, inquiry-based questions and tasks and use of GeoGebra.
The Engineering Students Understanding Mathematics (ESUM) project was a developmental research project aimed at enhancing the quality of mathematics learning of students of materials engineering in terms of their engagement and conceptual understanding. The initial phase of the project consisted of an innovation in mathematics teaching-learning which was designed, implemented and studied, with feedback and concomitant modification to practice. Details are reported in Jaworski (2011b). The second phase of the project, reported here, focused more overtly on the analysis of data in relation to theoretical perspectives. In particular, Activity Theory (AT) was used to make sense of emerging findings.
Flying Skills! (FS) cuts across disability, age, gender, race to target a diverse, ‘hard to reach’ audience of unemployed, economically disadvantaged, inactive people aged 45 years and over, with an interest in engineering and technology.
The overall aim of this project was to deliver inspirational environmental workshops to students from under-represented groups in regional HEIs. The objectives were to engage a wider range of undergraduates in STEM learning, to raise the profile of STEM on campuses and to provide professional development training to the STEM faculty and students attending or volunteering on the workshop.
'HerStory' aimed to create a unique and innovative online resource for women and girls with accessible information highlighting progression routes into, through and beyond engineering higher education (HE). A broad range of role models, including those following non-traditional routes, outlined how they made sense of available options and arrived at choices to suit them. Engineering HE lecturers provided perspectives on what to expect and employers outlined what they look for in engineering graduates.
Formative group projects, utilising enquiry-based learning (EBL), were used to engage first year engineering students more with their courses and their peers in an attempt to improve both student attendance and cohort cohesion.
The Industrial Dissertation for Professional Engineers (IDPE) project is aimed at practicing engineers of any discipline who are not currently meeting qualification/training requirements that would enable them to achieve CEng status.
This project allowed industrial partners to work in collaboration with academics in the design and delivery of specific modules. The project successfully developed three ‘company-sponsored’ modules with representatives from civil engineering (BAM Nuttall), chemical engineering (SABIC) and project management (Jacobs Engineering) companies who were able to draw upon their experiences of the strengths and shortcomings of recently appointed graduates in order to enhance the employability focus of the modules.
This project aimed to develop credit-bearing WBL for a series of placements integrated into each stage of a clinical engineering degree course. The programme is vocational, focused on healthcare science careers within the National Health Service (NHS) and requires close partnerships with hospitals.
This project sought to develop an engineering module which would bring in experts from industry to educate future engineering specialists in aircraft product development in order to address the industry standards and codes of practice. The industry staff lectured on key aspects of aircraft design integration and collaborated with the academics involved in teaching this module. The proposed development was mapped against the current accredited MSc/MEng curriculum. The industry partners participated in the aircraft design project development and its technical quality assessment during the academic year.
The purpose of this project was to investigate the extent to which engineering concepts could be taught through hands-on activities led by student ambassadors to primary school pupils. The paper describes a programme of activities that was carried out by London South Bank University in local primary schools as part of its outreach programme.
Building on existing good working practice in the undergraduate teaching of civil engineering, and supported by sector skills organisations and employers from the nuclear and civil engineering areas, this project established the learning outcomes and delivery method required to increase the exposure of students, lecturers and employers to nuclear new build environments that currently do not exist in the UK (Engineering Graduates for Industry (2010)).
This project’s main objective is to engage employers within the civil and construction sector, working in partnership with the Department of Civil Engineering (DCE) at the University of Greenwich as well as schools and colleges within the Kent region, to promote the study of civil engineering related courses/programmes amongst female students.
This case study reports on a research study. The study focuses on mechanical and automotive engineering (undergraduate) students’ experiences of the development of professional skills and attributes within Activity-led learning (ALL) experiences. This includes an introductory first 6-week ALL experience.
This case study describes a project to showcase and extend student-led, employer-focused, extra-curricular activity, building on earlier work which encouraged the formation of groups of students who were interested in undertaking these kinds of activities. Students at Loughborough University were invited to submit proposals for activities and funding was provided to successful applicants to enable them to jump-start their ideas.
Feedback to students which is valid, reliable and helpful is critical to their intellectual development and progression. Engineers communicate and generate ideas in a variety of ways, and language is an important medium requiring a high level of ability in clear communication and critical thinking. There is diversity within the student body in terms of its ability to communicate effectively in writing.
This project was concerned with the threshold values that students need to develop in order to become socially responsible engineers. It investigated level 4 student experiences of engineering and explored how students related their courses to learning about the values that socially responsible engineers need to develop. The outcomes of the project include recommendations about how curriculum design initiatives can enable all students in the first year of their studies to navigate through these threshold values as they progress further through their studies towards becoming an engineer.
This case study describes the design and development of an attractive new resource to encourage STEM academics to incorporate video reporting into their student-centred learning activities. The resource, described as a ‘toolkit’, provides support for those who wish to pilot the idea, shows the benefits of the innovation through accessible examples and offers answers to typical questions likely to be asked by new adopters.
A scheme has been introduced to the civil engineering programme at Coventry University where part-time students with industry experience act as mentors for full-time first year students. Training and support for the mentors has been provided. Groups have been formed of 2 mentors and 4 or 5 mentees.
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