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Globalisation has created demands for engineers with competencies enabling their proactive engagement in a global industry. This demand has created pressure on institutions to design engineering programs that can produce internationalised engineers with globally mobile competencies. This paper presents a review of current research in internationalisation of engineering education, with particular focus on issues of international accreditation and global applicability. With justification of the need for an international collaboration in transforming engineering education, this review highlights concerns about the applicability of a Western accreditation discourse to African countries and the efficacy of global and regional efforts towards accreditation and globalisation. The existing systems of international accreditation and reciprocity agreements are critically reviewed and concerns for internationalisation are discussed. Published issues of accreditation in higher education in Africa are assessed and opportunities for enhancement are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a comparison of two universities: one public, and the other private. Two competency-based Master's degree programs will be compared in terms of the strengths and weaknesses identified by their coordinators. The faculty's perceptions of the development/acquisition of said competencies by the students will be presented, as well as their impressions of the entire competency-based teaching/learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an innovative experience developed by seven Universities (six European and one non-European) to teach a two weeks summer course in a non-conventional, remotely way is presented. The course is developed using a Project Based teaching-learning methodology and it is also designed to have a deeper knowledge of the relationship between sustainable development and the economic and financial conditions. The experience is innovative because the technology used, allowed students to share knowledge and participate from countries all over the world. Competences of students in this context are measured and strengthened. The most interesting issues, challenges and difficulties are presented here. Conclusions help professors to propose actions to improve the methodology in order to strengthen students' competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers are required to have good levels of spatial skills in order to operate in a professional environment. Consequently, we may state that spatial skills are a professional skill which engineers must acquire. In this work, a methodology based on 3D virtual technologies and tools have been implemented in terms of the curriculum of the subject of Engineering Graphics. The experimental study has been carried out with different groups of students from several engineering degrees who studied that subject, using different 3D virtual technologies. Once the subject is completed, the results indicate that there is a significant difference between the spatial ability levels acquired by the groups which had 3D technology support compared with those which didn't. Regardless of the technology used, the improvement is quite similar over both groups, without any significant differences. The academic performance of the students is much better on the part of those groups using these technologies compared with those who complete the course following traditional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is one of the skills of our graduates most demanded by working companies, which is directly linked to problem-solving, innovation, and the creation of new businesses ideas or the patents development. The demand for the creativity skill is ever increasing and appears among the five skills most valued by employers at times when resources are most limited. During the last three years, a set of initiatives has been performing at the Industrial Technologies Degree course, at the Universidad Politecnica of Madrid, to enhance creativity as one of the most relevant skills. The goal is clearly to improve the creative skill of the engineers in the industrial field, having focused the activities carried out on the two major players in the educational process, i.e. the teaching staff and the students. The paper describes the process followed to gradually bring on board an ever increasing number of teachers committed to developing their student's creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational institutions face many challenges in closing the gap between what is currently offered through academic engineering curricula and what is expected by society in general and industry in particular. There are many aspects to these challenges and here we address needs that are specific to global professionals by investigating the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for mediating and using Collaborative Technologies (CT) in an Open Ended Group Project (OEGP) within a global setting. We discuss these needs as framed by relevant theoretical frameworks for collaboration and learning (including Collaborative knowledge building and Collaborative Technology Fit), mapped using empirical data from a course setting involving global collaboration between two Universities (one in the United States and one in Sweden). The paper concludes with a commentary on competencies beyond discipline specific technical skills and presents recommendations, based upon this research, for developing students' proficiency in both mediating and using CTs in OEGP courses. These recommendations are followed by an outline of key areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A teaching-learning experience focused on the promotion of specific transversal competencies (self-learning, efficient oral and written communication and team working) integrated into the curriculum of Bachelor in Industrial Engineering (BIE) is presented. With the aim of reinforcing some traditional lacking aspects in old engineering curricula, some core subjects linked to project-based learning activities have been included in the new curriculum of BIE given by the School of Engineering of Barcelona (UPC). The current curriculum includes two mandatory subjects aimed to the acquisition of professional competencies. Students can choose from a list of fifteen available projects. An example of the type of projects offered on the course is given here. It is an interdisciplinary project combining Mechanics of Materials, Statistics and Engineering Project disciplines. Teaching learning methodology and benefits of the approach followed for promoting professional skills are presented. The final section summarises the main results provided by the experience against conventional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, new syllabuses are being implemented accordingly to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in Spain. This paper describes the methodology and assessment strategy applied in the subject "Digital Circuits and Systems" (CSD) in the third semester course in the Telecommunications Engineering degree at the Castelldefels School of Telecommunications and Aerospace Engineering (EETAC) of the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC). The course's main learning objective is that students be able to analyse and design simple combinational and sequential circuits by means of hardware description languages for programmable devices and program applications using microcontrollers and C language. Small groups of two or three students work in cooperation using PBL techniques to solve design-oriented assignments, while instructors act more as mediators than lecturers in order to facilitate project development and knowledge acquisition. The experience we describe corresponds to the spring term of 2011, a period in which this methodology was applied to 46 students. This work compares statistically the influence of the students' background on their academic performance in our subject. A significant correlation has been detected between test marks and the final grade, based on continuous assessment. Students' opinions have been obtained by means of a survey at the end of the course. Although the high workload and involvement, because this methodology requires constancy and commitment from the students, most of them have positive opinions on the development of the subject, due to the fact that they realise that they have put into practice several competences or cross-curricular skills, while acquiring the course content, and furthermore, most of them have passed the course, even with higher grades than the ones from other subjects in the same semester. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transversal skills are known to be often forgotten in the engineering studies plans or relegated to the will of the professors. The nuclear engineering subjects at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid are taught in the last courses of the degree or at master and doctorate levels. Therefore, the alumni are expected to be almost ready for the working period of their lives. Throughout the last years, due to the Bologna process, some transversal skills evaluation initiatives have been implemented. Those initiatives were mainly based on doing an additional project, individually or in group, during the semester, and presenting it in public at the end of the semester. Thanks to those initiatives, noticeable lacks were identified in several transversal skills such as oral and written communication, creative thinking and team work. For example, some alumni confessed that it was the first time they had to expose a technical work in public. Those lacks in the transversal skills were also identified by engineering companies. Motivated by those issues, a new project to develop the mentioned skills in nuclear engineering subjects was raised. In the first phase during the courses 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, two subjects were selected as pilot: Nuclear Power Plants (4th course in degree) and Reliability and Risk Analysis (Master in Nuclear Science and Technology). They were chosen by the different level of knowledge, the numbers of students and their origins. The training has been improved during the second phase with the lessons learned of the first phase. In conclusion, following the alumni polls and evaluated results, the training was very effective and the alumni have a positive feedback on it. They think they have developed their transversal skills in a way they feel better prepared for their careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competence evaluation promoted by the European High Education Area entails a very important methodological change that requires guiding support to help lecturers carry out this new and complex task. In this regard, the Technical University of Madrid (UPM, by its Spanish acronym) has financed a series of coordinated projects with the objectives of developing a model for teaching and evaluating core competencies and providing support to lecturers. This paper deals with the problem-solving competence. The first step has been to elaborate a guide for teachers to provide a homogeneous way to asses this competence. This guide considers several levels of acquisition of the competence and provides the rubrics to be applied for each one. The guide has been subsequently validated with several pilot experiences. In this paper we will explain the problem-solving assessment guide for teachers and will show the pilot experiences that have been carried out. We will finally justify the validity of the method to assess the problem-solving competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting professional competencies is becoming an issue of interest and major concern in university environments. The assessment of individual students has usually been based on their knowledge and skills in solving problems on paper in an environment where time is scarce and information is restricted to the data given in the written instructions. However, the human resource managers of the major companies rate basic professional competencies very highly in the graduates that they take on, putting less importance on the level of technical knowledge possessed at the time of they are being taken on. In 1982 engineers from Ford, Chrysler and General Motors in the United States, being aware of how newly graduated engineers were adapted to automotive companies, designed a competition for universities throughout the world: Formula SAE. This competition involved conceiving, designing, manufacturing and competing with a formula-type vehicle. In 2003 the University Institute for Automobile Research (UPM--INSIA), was set up as the first Spanish Formula SAE competition team, called UPMRacing. The aim of this paper is the assessment of the professional competencies promoted by the Formula SAE project in individual students participating in the UPMRacing team. The compeTEA questionnaire® has been selected to assess competencies in the context of the UPMRacing team. This questionnaire has been applied to the team members in two milestones: when they start their participation (initial stage), and after they compete. Results conclude that this learning activity increases the professional competencies in a significant way, mainly in case of the students with the lowest level of professional competencies in the initial stage. Additionally, the main deficiencies identified in the participating students were the acquisition of organisational and planning competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appropriate attitude towards work is a generic competency developed in the Bachelor's Degree in Computing Engineering at the Barcelona School of Informatics. This competency includes: the ability to work in teams with responsibility and respect, a proactive attitude, motivation for quality and the continuous improvement in processes and results, as well as the adaptability to organizational and technological changes. In order to develop this competency into a comprehensive integrated experience, a definition in terms of dimensions, which are further defined according to three-level objectives, is required. A set of activities to achieve each objective is proposed. The goal is to define this set in a way that makes it easily integrated into the contents of each course where the competency is involved. The evaluation of the competency can be obtained tracking the progress of students developing these activities. This paper presents a proposal to develop and assess this competency, with a six semester experience integrating activities in the degree program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the steps followed at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales (ETSII) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) to progressively implement an outcomes assessment framework. This assessment is understood as the integral process to guide and guarantee that graduates, when they finish their studies, have acquired the knowledge, abilities and skills established in the program (i.e. outcomes). This is a process linked to the entire program (and not to a single course or activity) and to the cohort of students (and not to the evaluation of each student individually). At the ETSII, the outcomes assessment process has been designed in accordance with the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria which establishes 11 outcomes that must be fulfilled by the students as a necessary step in the accreditation process and as a preparation to attain the educational program objectives. The implementation of these 11 outcomes is intentionally unspecified by ABET to encourage each engineering program's faculty to achieve its own specificity considering its idiosyncrasy. This paper describes the approach followed in the ETSII to develop an integral strategy for the institution and to progressively evolve to an outcomes assessment culture. From this experience, some quite generalizable learned lessons are extracted that can be useful for other faculties involved in similar processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ETSEIAT (Escola Técnica Superior d'Enginyeries Industrial i Aeronáutica of Terrassa) recently executed pilot programs to introduce generic and specific skills into its study plans. As these pilots are now concluding, an evaluation of their efficiency has been conducted. This paper analyses the answers given by professors who were interviewed (via inperson interviews and online tests) to determine how they developed and evaluated their students' skills. The results of these interviews offer clear data about the progress obtained by the pilot programs, how the professors understood the recently added dynamics and tools, and how the new skills are integrated into the various subjects and courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the development of different multidisciplinary skills within the framework of development of Final Degree Projects and Master Degree Projects is presented. By means of liaisons established with industry, not only technical aspects of real industrial challenges are covered, but also the necessary transverse competences. The continuous feedback between students, academia and industrial/corporate members leads to an effective multidisciplinary environment, in which all of the participants have the opportunity of experiencing an effective increase in their knowledge base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new degrees in Spanish universities generated as a result of the Bologna process, stress a new dimension: the generic competencies to be acquired by university students (leadership, problem solving, respect for the environment, etc.). At Universidad Politécnica de Madrid a teaching model was defined for two degrees: Graduate in Computer Engineering and Graduate in Software Engineering. Such model incorporates the training, development and assessment of generic competencies planned in these curricula. The aim of this paper is to describe how this model was implemented in both degrees. The model has three components. The first refers to a set of seven activities for introducing mechanisms for training, development and assessment of generic competencies. The second component aims to coordinate actions that implement the competencies across courses (in space and time). The third component consists of a series of activities to perform quality control. The implementation of generic competencies was carried out in first year courses (first and second semesters), together with the planning for second year courses (third and fourth semesters). We managed to involve a high percentage of first-year courses (80%) and the contacts that have been initiated suggest a high percentage in the second year as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of innovative and competitive products is crucial for any company's long-term success in the global information society and the global market. Educational engineering programs should facilitate the building of both technical and professional engineering competences. Project based learning, teamwork and real-life product development in collaboration with industrial companies seem to be appropriate ingredients of such programs. A concept of academia-industry collaboration and its realisations were developed and applied by a strategic alliance of European universities. Initial results of the communication-trust building-creativity triad showed some properties of one of the applied concept realisations. Although the concept and its realisations were deemed successful, identified issues have to be addressed in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering practice, which is the ongoing application of engineering knowledge and skills in the professional context, is an important part of engineering education. Undergraduate students should demonstrate potential for using professional engineering skills and knowledge in their work after graduation. However, there is no tool to help instructors describe or measure the learning associated with engineering practice. This paper reviews the literature in the field of professional practice and suggests a new taxonomy of learning outcomes for this area, inspired by Miller's Pyramid from the medical education literature, supporting the use of learning outcomes for engineering practice in undergraduate education. The professional knowledge literature was reviewed to help describe engineering practice, and delineate it from other cognitive skills in engineering. The literature on learning taxonomies provides an understanding of existing tools, and demonstrates a gap in describing the learning associated with engineering practice. Finally, the proposed taxonomy was applied to two engineering courses, to better describe the taxonomy in context. Future research will specifically consider how the practice taxonomy can inform teaching and assessment practices. The engineering curriculum should be designed to provide the student with increasingly authentic experiences in which to practice these skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Society demands the adaptation of engineering degrees to the needs of the labor market. This study was designed to investigate the level of expertise in the various competencies acquired by graduates of Agricultural Engineering in the course of their studies and the level required of them in their jobs. Online questionnaires aimed at graduates and employers were developed to assess both professional and technical competencies, and then piloted on graduates at the University of Leon (Spain). Graduates indicated that they perceived a deficit in professional competencies. A significant agreement was observed between perceptions of graduates and employers about which professional competencies are most important in the labor market. The results indicated a deficit in training in some technical competencies and excessive emphasis in others. Most of the core subjects which form the basis of an engineer's education, especially Mathematics and Statistics, were rated by graduates as very important for work. The highest training deficits detected in this study were related to communication, practical engineering, and engineering business skills. The methodology described in this paper proved useful for obtaining information on the most important competencies for the labor market, deficits and over-emphasis in training, and those competencies that should be incorporated into the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to find out the gaps in key competencies, those of employees in industry and students in college should be analyzed. Key competencies of students and technicians in automotive fields are scaled and compared to each other. Furthermore, the differences between two groups are analyzed to check on the gaps. Initial test sheets are reconstructed as an improved one after the prior assessment reflecting the opinion of industry to execute reliable level assessment. The area and level of key competencies are set up by literature analysis and consultation. The average scale of key competencies is assessed by students and technicians respectively. Numeracy, understanding organization, technology skill, problem-solving, interpersonal relation, communication skill, self-management and development, resource management and information application are selected as key competencies in Korea. Three levels of key competencies are set up. Key competencies of automotive college and industry are compared. Regardless of areas, the gaps between the two are significant shows a kind of discrepancy between industry and college requiring a scheme to fill the gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was performed to identify the non-technical competencies needed by engineering graduates in Chile. A list of abilities and knowledge attributes were derived from similar studies and the expectations expressed by professional organizations. Input was received from managers of 75 different companies across a broad range of industries and sizes and 116 engineering graduates regarding the importance and preparation for 57 abilities and knowledge attributes in 10 categories. Each competency was given a priority based on one of three criteria: 50% or more of managers reporting it to be of the highest level of importance, an average rating greater than a cutoff, and a weighted measure of priority incorporating the importance and gap between graduate preparation and needs. The results suggest that, to managers in Chile, the most important non-technical competencies are in the areas of project control, ethics, communications, teamwork, innovation and budgeting. The competencies identified as important were similar to those seen in studies in other countries, but with a greater emphasis on ethics and innovation and less emphasis on quality and customer focus. A method for prioritizing the important competencies was also presented. Many initiatives were proposed to improve specific non-technical competencies that graduates need for competing in the Chilean job market. This paper presents the methodology, the findings, the comparisons with results from similar studies in other countries, and the strategies developed as a result of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifelong Learning (LLL) is critical for engaged citizens in the modern knowledge economy. The development of such generic or key competencies should be integrated throughout curricula, along with specific competencies in the disciplines such as engineering. This is a common educational goal in higher education in the USA and in Europe inside the Bologna Process. To enhance the capability of students to articulate their lifelong learning competencies, we developed a 'Lifelong Learning Competencies for Engineers' program for senior engineering students. This was presented as a workshop in a senior design course at the University of San Diego. The workshop includes presentations on lifelong learning competencies and specific recommendations for engineers, as well as an active learning exercise that helps students demonstrate their lifelong learning competence developed throughout their undergraduate career. Our mixed-methods evaluation reveals that the students improve their awareness of the importance of LLL at an important time in their lives as they finish their undergraduate academic career and move to the global labor market. Since lifelong learning spans disciplinary and national boundaries, this program could be adopted by other engineer educators and adapted by educators from a variety of fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some findings resulting from a four-year research aiming to identify what competence are developed by students following an apprenticeship program in engineering and what the developmental steps are in conjunction with the curriculum. The main findings presented here suggest: 1) that competence has three dimensions; 2) that the competence framework of an engineer has five main components; 3) that there are four main steps that comprise the competence development framework; 4) and that building competence results from three different and interlocking processes. Our competence framework is then discussed by comparing our graduates' profile with those of other engineers in France, as well as with existing international standards for professional engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practicum component in undergraduate education across all professions (identified by various terms such as 'internship,' 'field education,' 'clinical experience' or 'co-op education') is typically rated by pre-baccalaureate students as the most important phase of their entire professional preparation. In this investigation, which formed one segment of a broader cross-Canada study, a group of post-practicum Engineering students from one Canadian university (who had just completed an internship with engineering firms) identified the most positive and the most negative aspects of that practicum experience. The authors compared these students' responses with those reported by post-practicum students from two other professions: Nursing and Teacher Education. Several positive aspects were identified by all three groups of students, such as: developing their professional competence and technical skills, increasing their personal self-confidence, and gaining real-world experience. Some of the negative aspects that all three cohorts mentioned were: receiving unsatisfactory internship placements, experiencing inadequate mentorship, and being assigned unproductive work tasks. The authors contend that practicum organizers across all professional fields should exchange with one another and examine such student data. The student voice provides a valuable dimension to the program-enhancement process, the ultimate goal of which, is to improve the 'experiential learning' phase of professional pre-training in all fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry has some perceived needs with respect to graduates. Here, the scope of Design Engineering is outlined, and compared with the more artistic and management aspects. Engineering designers follow some principles in their work, and display expertise and competence when trying to solve design problems. Formalizing methods should prove useful from a safety/rational operating approach. These methods are best derived from Engineering Design Science, using the model of a general transformation system as the basis. Engineering students should learn such rational operation and the theory on which the methods are based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]