1. Using Students with Current Industry Experience to Evaluate Course Delivery.
- Author
-
DAVIES, JOHN W.
- Subjects
COURSE evaluation (Education) ,ENGINEERING education in universities & colleges ,PART-time college students ,PARTNERSHIPS in education ,GROUP work in education ,HIGHER education ,ADULTS ,UNIVERSITIES & colleges - Abstract
This paper considers the opportunity for academic-industry collaboration that arises when a proportion of engineering students in a cohort are part-time students with current industry experience. It describes a study that took the opportunity of probing the response of these students to aspects of course design, using their perspective to answer the questions: 'How successful are we in our attempts to create realistic project work for students, and what improvements should be made?' The consensus from semi-structured group interviews with 52 students is that the project work they have experienced is generally realistic from a technical point of view, enhanced by basing projects on a real site, using real data, and working with a realistic brief. Some students considered the briefs to be too open-ended to be realistic, but others relished the opportunity this presented. Team-working aspects of university group projects were not considered realistic by the students; they pointed out that the environment in engineering practice is very different because it is moderated by the management structure and professional expectations of staff. The role of a client figure was identified as important in creating realism. The paper considers the potential conflict between some aspects of realism in project work and educational benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013