Search

Problem-solving is a key engineering skill, yet is an area in which engineering graduates underperform. This paper investigates the potential of using web-based tools to teach students problem-solving techniques without the need to make use of class time. An idea generation experiment involving 90 students was designed. Students were surveyed about their study habits and reported they use electronic-based materials more than paper-based materials while studying, suggesting students may engage with web-based tools. Students then generated solutions to a problem task using either a paper-based template or an equivalent web interface. Students who used the web-based approach performed as well as students who used the paper-based approach, suggesting the technique can be successfully adopted and taught online. Web-based tools may therefore be adopted as supplementary material in a range of engineering courses as a way to increase students' options for enhancing problem-solving skills.

Peer review has been the focus of an ongoing study at a series of recent annual conferences of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE). A further development of this study has been to explore the perspective/s of the authors of these conference papers and the impact that peer review can have on their development as researchers. This paper uses the identity-trajectory framework to illustrate relationships between peer review and academic identity construction for engineering education authors in the AAEE community. Participants' responses illustrate how various aspects of responding to reviews and writing reviews for other authors, contribute to the development of the networking and intellectual strands of their academic identity as engineering education researchers. We suggest that members of the global engineering education community should be mindful of how they write their peer reviews of conference papers to ensure the opportunity to constructively contribute to their peers' successful transition into this different research paradigm is not missed.

This paper reports on research that extends knowledge about higher education students' perceptions of online engagement. In particular, the study aimed to identify what students thought engagement was and how they experienced it. Understanding students' views about online engagement will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the topic and should assist instructional designers to support academic staff to develop online courses that are more likely to engage their students. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study found that students felt most engaged with learning when doing practical, hands-on activities. Additional findings from the qualitative and quantitative data are highlighted, with some differences between the students' perceptions in the different types of data, particularly concerning social engagement. This suggests that further research is warranted. The paper offers several practical implications for student learning.

Biomedical engineering is critical in improving people's lives through innovative solutions to biological and medical challenges. In the face of today's rapidly evolving climate, the field of biomedical engineering encounters numerous pressures that demand up-to-date skills and competencies. The (re-)development of curricula aligning with industry and societal needs, students' expectations, and academics' expertise while outlining graduates' knowledge (that) and abilities (how) becomes indispensable despite the challenges and complexities presented by conflicting priorities, tight timelines, and scarce resources. This paper presents a qualitative study conducted by a biomedical engineering graduate school at an Australian university. The study engaged four key stakeholders--industry partners, recent graduates, current academics, and students--in a self-auditing process of an existing biomedical engineering curriculum. This exercise aimed to identify priorities for the future development of the curriculum. The findings reveal the perspectives from the four stakeholder groups, with industry partners and recent graduates focusing on technical and transferable skills and current students and academic staff advocating for breadth and a more practice-oriented curriculum, where transdisciplinarity should inform biomedical engineering education. We propose that this evidence-based and bottom-up approach with multiple stakeholders holds potential implications for fields beyond biomedical engineering education. It provides valuable guidance to educational institutions seeking to (re-)develop their curricula to align with evolving industry and society demands.

A study on the effectiveness of engineering education in the development of industry-ready graduate engineers was conducted among academics and industry experts of engineering disciplines who have relevant experience in work-integrated learning in Australia. The hypothesis was that embedding enhanced work-integrated learning into all study semesters has the increased possibility of developing industry-ready graduate engineers. This paper outlines the research outcomes and an enhanced work-integrated learning framework that might be helpful for improving the industry-readiness of graduating engineers. Based on the research results, the researchers propose the allocation of an appropriate level of work-integrated learning for each indicator of attainment component from the elements of Engineers Australia's Stage I Competencies. The aim of this paper is to provide detailed recommendations for implementing an enhanced work-integrated model in Bachelor of Engineering programs in Australia. The authors also present the concept of curriculum development based on industry-integrated learning outcomes, as well as the campus and industry engagement model for enhanced work-integrated learning for the subjects of study in the Bachelor of Engineering program. This framework can be used globally as a reference for developing similar work-integrated learning models.

Educators constantly need to make adjustments to their pedagogy and learning activities to reflect the fast changes in society, the economy and industry. This has been clearly demonstrated throughout the world in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic required fully remote delivery of tertiary education. The aim of this study was comparing the experiences and perceptions of tertiary students in a fully online and a blended delivery mode, particularly in response to their laboratory skills and development of graduate attributes. Pedagogical aspects were kept consistent across delivery modes to minimise the differences in learning activities across cohorts. A comparison was made between the 2020 fully online cohort and the 2021 blended delivery cohort. The students were asked about their perceptions of how well they thought the course developed their graduate attributes; how authentic they thought the course was; and how easy the content was to navigate and understand. A mixed methods approach was used, where both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered. The blended delivery mode students appeared to benefit from having a specific reflective task, which allowed them to see their learning in a broader context. The paper discusses the blending and online learning from the students' perspectives of developing graduate attributes and experiential learning. Specifically, where hands on skills are required, students need further guidance in "learning how to learn" or metacognition. A key challenge for future blended learning is getting the balance right between achieving efficiency in online learning and lack of social and dynamic interactions aspect of the online community.

Engineering mechanics is a core course for mechanical engineering university students. In recent years, the lecturers of a second-year undergraduate engineering mechanics course faced many new challenges arising from ever-increasing class sizes, as well as evolving learning styles and expectations of new generation students due to advances in technology. This paper describes the evolution of a mechanics course in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of New South Wales using blended learning. Significant changes were implemented to: (1) reduce the administrative burden associated with the large number of students; (2) maintain student interest and engagement throughout the semester; and (3) successfully deliver the learning outcomes. Student participation was observed to increase with integration of additional information and communication technology, as well as implementation of online assessments into the course structure. Surprisingly, implementation of the blended learning did not improve student academic performance in the summative assessments. This paper reflects what we have learned in the development of this blended learning mechanics course.

Industry engagement, commonly implemented as a 12 week industry placement during a vacation towards the end of the degree, has traditionally been a provider-mandated component of externally accredited professional engineering degrees in Australia. Such placements are intended to bridge knowledge and capability gaps between academic study and engineering employment and contextualise the final phase of academic study. Changes in the composition of Australia's engineering industries have made it progressively harder to source such placements. In-curriculum exposure to engineering practice has also been expected, but has been delivered with considerable variability. In 2014 the authors completed a national project, led by the Australian Council of Engineering Deans (ACED), with peak industry bodies and several partner universities, funded from the Commonwealth Department of Industry Workplace Innovation Program, to explore how improving industry engagement could contribute further to engineering graduates' learning outcomes and employability. The data collected from the engineering students and employers, reported in this paper, can now be regarded as baseline data on industry engagement, against which subsequent developments can be referenced. For the first time, students' ratings of the value of different methods for industry engagement are shown to be related to their 'authenticity'. Several industry-inspired in-curriculum interventions were also trialled at partner universities. Guidelines for good practice were developed from melding the experiential findings with theoretical perspectives. In the years since completing the project, the accreditation body, Engineers Australia, has updated and intensified its focus on engagement with practice (including changing its language from 'exposure' to 'engagement'), and many engineering faculties have significantly enhanced their models and requirements for work integrated learning and industry engagement. This paper outlines these changes and examples of new implementations, including virtual and electronically-mediated methods that also reflect ongoing changes in engineering industry practice.

There is ongoing interest in developing rigorous and accurate assessment methods in higher education, particularly in the use of assessment rubrics and in providing more useful feedback to students rather than a simple grade. However, there has been little used of reliable assessment rubrics that provide feedback to individual students on their teamwork participation and skills, and which assist academic staff in assessing teamwork among students. This paper reports on the second phase of a study that aimed to evaluate a rubric to assess skills and processes in teamwork, and whether a rubric facilitated a better learning experience than a simple marking scheme. The second phase focused on the implementation of a revised assessment rubric designed to assist students and staff in understanding what was expected in the assessment process, and in particular the creation of efficient tools and metrics to measure both teamwork and individual performance during collaborative team design projects. Findings from two surveys of students provided the dataset for this second phase of the study. The findings demonstrate that assessment rubrics provide an important adjunct in improving students' teamwork performance and their understanding of their learning activities. This study will also contribute to ongoing discussions on higher education assessment methods.

An ever-increasing array of design visualisation tools are available to designers. As such, design education is constantly challenged to keep up with these trends so that students are best equipped for entering industrial practice. This paper reports a study into the use of digital sketching, a relatively new digital visualisation tool. The study aims to identify thematic differences in how students and practitioners perceive digital sketching. These are given in terms of the tool's characteristics, and how these characteristics guide its application in early stages of the design process. Data on perceptions is captured using design diaries and semistructured interviews. Results show key differences in the way that practitioners perceive the intent of visualisation. Practitioners focus on iterating towards a solution during the design process. Students are much more focused on the task of creating visualisations. This reveals an underlying contradiction in the way tools are perceived between creating visualisations to gain expertise or skill, versus creating them to advance the design process. The insights help improve our understanding of how the different characteristics of digital sketching inform its use. We reflect on how we educate students with respect to selecting and using digital sketching. We conclude with implications for education of digital sketching, as well as other emerging digital visualisation tools.

The Makerspace phenomenon has morphed into three readily identifiable types characterised by accessibility: dedicated, distributed, and mobile. The research presented in this paper describes a type of Makerspace that is defined by its purpose: to improve the confidence and ability of primary education students in STEM education. This approach is innovative and timely given the renewed interest and investment of the federal and state governments into STEM education. A new model of professional learning that is currently being validated in an extended, funded project framed this research that involved 9 female teacher education students and 71 schoolgirls in Years 5 and 6. Whilst a large set of qualitative data was collected, this paper reports on the progress and reflections of the teacher education students, and shares insights into their personal learning and development as teachers.

The use of analytic methods for extracting learning strategies from trace data has attracted considerable attention in the literature. However, there is a paucity of research examining any association between learning strategies extracted from trace data and responses to well-established self-report instruments and performance scores. This paper focuses on the link between the learning strategies identified in the trace data and student reported approaches to learning. The paper reports on the findings of a study conducted in the scope of an undergraduate engineering course (N = 144) that followed a flipped classroom design. The study found that learning strategies extracted from trace data can be interpreted in terms of deep and surface approaches to learning. The detected significant links with self-report measures are with small effect sizes for both the overall deep approach to learning scale and the deep strategy scale. However, there was no observed significance linking the surface approach to learning and surface strategy nor were there significant associations with motivation scales of approaches to learning. The significant effects on academic performance were found, and consistent with the literature that used self-report instruments showing that students who followed a deep approach to learning had a significantly higher performance.

In this paper, we introduce 'Concept Questions,' a weekly writing assignment that has been incorporated into multiple upper-level engineering courses at a single university with the intent of enhancing students' conceptual understanding of the course content. To explore the influence of this activity on students in these courses, we compared students' scores on the Concept Question assignments with their final exam scores, analysed students' open-ended responses to questions regarding their learning in the course, and surveyed students who had taken these courses in previous semesters to understand how the Concept Question assignments may have influenced their learning approaches in subsequent courses. Our analysis revealed that students highlighted a variety of learning outcomes from the Concept Questions assignments and their performance on the assignments was correlated with their final exam scores. However, most students did not report that these assignments had changed their learning approaches overall. This paper supports prior work suggesting that such assignments can be helpful in individual engineering courses, but further work is needed to explore student learning across courses.

Engineering education for sustainable design often focuses on technical solutions with little consideration of social impact. This paper presents a case study of a project-based learning (PBL) studio course engaging engineering students in social and sustainable design practices with external clients in developing economies. The case is a review of how concepts from Socially Responsible Design (SRD), Appropriate Technology (AT) and Human-Centred Design (HCD) integrated into a pedagogical model (Locale) focusing student effort on the socio-cultural, technical, economic and environmental aspects. Drawing on data from ten years of course operation the analysis identifies three distinct variants. Re-examining all 186 design projects using a new metric based on the pedagogical model (Locale) revealed an upward trend in the socio-cultural and economic appropriateness of the solutions without any diminution of technical suitability. Thus, the paper provides a new approach for designing and evaluating PBL courses specifically focused on social and sustainable design.

Teaching second year undergraduate digital electronics is a serious business, designed to impart individual technical mastery. In this paper we attempt to embed several key digital logic concepts within an escape room game. We report results of iteratively piloting our game with academic engineering staff and then used them with students showing promise for using escape rooms to support undergraduate engineering education.

The EPICS Program was created in 1995 with the dual purposes of improving engineering education and addressing compelling needs within our communities. The model broke with many traditional academic traditions, involving students in multidisciplinary teams of students from first-year to fourth years for multiple semesters or even years on projects with local and global community partners. EPICS has been recognized as a model within engineering education and community engagement. The EPICS model has been adapted by several other institutions at the undergraduate and pre-university settings. There are currently 38 active higher education institutions with each adapting the model to their own institutional culture. This paper highlights the EPICS model and how four institutions that are recognized global leaders in engineering education have collaborated and adapted the model to their own institution's goals and culture.

The Charles Sturt University (CSU) Engineering programme is a new course (degree programmme) established in 2016 by a university that had not previously taught engineering. This start from scratch occasion was taken as an opportunity to build an all-new programme structure and philosophy. Students at CSU Engineering complete a sequence of three semester-long Project-Based Learning (PBL) style challenges across their time face-to-face at the university; after this point, they commence four yearlong paid industry-based work placements and continue studies in an online mode during evenings, weekends, and scheduled study days. The underlying technical curriculum for the engineering programme at Charles Sturt University is delivered mostly on-line via the RealizeIT platform and is based on a philosophy of just-in-time, self-directed learning. Students have freedom in deciding when, how and, to a large extent, which elements of the curriculum they engage within the online environment. This freedom, along with the PBL-style challenges, is enabled by the structure of the technical curriculum which is broken down into fine-grained learning activities called 'topics'. In this paper, we summarise our experiences during the first four years, and the insights gained into student behaviours when offered an opportunity to engage in self-directed learning.

ChatGPT, a sophisticated online chatbot, sent shockwaves through many sectors once reports filtered through that it could pass exams. In higher education, it has raised many questions about the authenticity of assessment and challenges in detecting plagiarism. Amongst the resulting frenetic hubbub, hints of potential opportunities in how ChatGPT could support learning and the development of critical thinking have also emerged. In this paper, we examine how ChatGPT may affect assessment in engineering education by exploring ChatGPT responses to existing assessment prompts from ten subjects across seven Australian universities. We explore the strengths and weaknesses of current assessment practice and discuss opportunities on how ChatGPT can be used to facilitate learning. As artificial intelligence is rapidly improving, this analysis sets a benchmark for ChatGPT's performance as of early 2023 in responding to engineering education assessment prompts. ChatGPT did pass some subjects and excelled with some assessment types. Findings suggest that changes in current practice are needed, as typically with little modification to the input prompts, ChatGPT could generate passable responses to many of the assessments, and it is only going to get better as future versions are trained on larger data sets.

Presented here is a novel engineering degree initiative established at Charles Sturt University (CSU), Australia. This program embodies emerging trends and prospects in engineering education, aspiring to nurture adept engineers well-prepared for practical application. Furthermore, this paper delves into the application of this program for training the next generation of water engineers, equipping them with indispensable skills to confront novel challenges. The CSU Engineering program incorporates several attributes commonly found in progressive engineering curricula. It places significance on work-based learning and encompasses an extensive 6000-hour industrial work placement. This emphasizes student self-reflection, engineering design, robust academic leadership, the integration of educational innovation and novel tools for scholastic exploration, and comprehensive student assessment. Gaining robust industry support, the CSU Engineering program garners recognition as an exemplar for future education. The adaptability, professionalism, responsibility, and leadership exhibited by CSU cadets are highly regarded by their industrial partners. Feedback highlights the consistent advancement of cadets' soft skills, spanning teamwork, communication, leadership, community engagement, and interpersonal relations. Notably, CSU cadets receive substantial remuneration from their industrial engagements. Despite the challenges posed by COVID-19 restrictions, the CSU Engineering program continues to operate seamlessly with minimal disruption.

Contribution: This paper introduces the real-world limitations and non-technical aspects of power electronics (PEs) projects to students through innovative tutorial activities. Background: Many electrical engineering curricula offer a PE courses (PECs) for third- or fourth-year undergraduate students. Prior research on PEs education mainly focused on improving students' experimental skills through developing practical experiments, laboratory activities, and problem/project-based learning. An instructional approach that instead employs real-world knowledge and skills is worth evaluating. Intended Outcomes: Students should be able to consider real-world technical and non-technical limitations when applying theory to design PE circuits and converters, and be able to select and carry out appropriate tests to troubleshoot circuits. Application Design: Prior research on engineering education emphasized the importance of introducing real-world limitations to the students as part of their curriculum. This paper suggests that the tutorial activities presented in a PEC can help students acquire skills in designing and troubleshooting a circuit or system according to desired technical aspects, real-world limitations, and available data. Findings: Evidence of the validity of this approach in a PEC at two Australian universities, over four academic years, is provided. Students receiving the new tutorial activities had percentage scores some 10-15 points higher than those who had traditional tutorials. Another evaluation reveals the students' vibrant participation in the activities during the new tutorial sessions.

This paper elaborates on a number of key criticisms of Mezirow's transformative learning theory as well as providing arguments that validate it. Our paper exemplifies how Mezirow's theory can help adult educators and prospective school teachers understand that social structures and belief systems can influence student learning, that learners make meaning of their experiences in various ways which influence the sort of value systems they develop and that disorienting dilemmas often challenge the validity of one's values and the assumptions that underpin them. It exemplifies how Mezirow's theory can be put into practice in Adult and Higher Education via three case studies undertaken by the authors in different places, at different times and with different sets of learners. These include mature aged women returning to study, PhDs at a Swedish Engineering University, and domestic and international students studying at an Australian regional university. The case studies make use of a values survey, interviews and subsequent focus groups. Data from the survey and interviews are analysed and used to argue that transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991) can be practiced, to good effect, in university staff development and teacher education courses.

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with written communication, despite years of interventions to improve student writing. Much has been written about the importance of getting engineering students to write, but there has been a little investigation of engineering academics' perceptions of writing practices in the curriculum, and the extent to which these practices are visible to their students and to the academics. This paper draws on research from an ongoing study into the invisibility of writing practices in the engineering curriculum using a practice architectures lens. The paper uses examples from the sites of practice of two participants in the study to argue that prevailing practices in engineering education constrain more than enable the development and practice of writing in the engineering curriculum.

This position paper sets out to examine value creation in the engineering enterprise, a process that has mostly been associated with innovation and entrepreneurs. An analysis of the literature on engineering value creation in business studies, engineering and engineering education publications shows that there has been surprisingly little empirical study and thus the means by which most engineers contribute value is unclear in the literature. Analysis of published data and data from studies by the authors in engineering workplaces in Australia, South East Asia and Portugal suggests that the work performed by most engineers has little to do with innovation. Based on these data the authors identify 14 ways in which engineers create value. An important finding is that routine engineering performances by a majority of engineers, not associated with innovation or entrepreneurial activities, not only can be shown to create value, but also to protect accumulated value from inadvertent destruction. The paper outlines the educational implications of these findings and proposes measures that engineering educators can adopt to improve the understanding of engineering graduates about engineering value creation.

It is well documented that engineering practice is as much social as it is technical. Providing accurate course mapping and supporting teaching staff to scaffold engineering practice learning through whole of programme curriculum are key challenges. This study proposes a conceptual framework for engineering professional practice in an Australian context that is constructed through the triangulation of data collected from practitioner perspectives, literature, and reflection upon both authors' industry experiences. This employability skill development framework describes six key themes as graduate-level learning outcomes aligned to Australian accreditation requirements in a format that readily supports explicit inclusion of engineering professional practice in curriculum design. These key themes are illustrated along a continuum of personal, interpersonal, and contextual competencies and attitudes to communicate the interrelated nature of engineering employability skills. While this paper does not attempt to propose a universal framework, its potential broader relevance, future refinement, and evaluation are discussed.

Suellen Shay's work on higher education curricula foregrounds the importance of professional curricula which face inwards to disciplines and outwards to practice. This paper builds on her framing of professional curricula, distinctive in the differentiated knowledge base and the social relations which legitimate them. I extend Shay's work deeper into the internal governance structures underpinning curriculum decisions in engineering. Two dimensions of governance are explored: central control from the Faculty of Engineering over its departments; and the authority of individuals in department-level curriculum and accreditation roles over their colleagues. The empirical focus is on curricula reform towards 'graduate attributes' in engineering education, through a comparative study of eight universities in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore, and Australia. The findings show that research-intensive universities are shielded from the full implications of accreditation requirements, while teaching-intensive universities are more likely to invest in developing the governance processes and systems demanded by professional bodies.

The professional formation of new graduates and their ability to perform well at the start of their career depends on the development of both technical skills and professional competencies. Whilst the latter aspects have become increasingly considered within engineering programs, they are often learnt within an academic context rather than a practice context. This is in contrast with research that argues that professional expertise should be learnt within the context in which it will be applied. This paper reports on an analysis of engineering student reflections on professional engagement activities over the duration of their university study. A text-based thematic analysis examines the link between different types of activities and professional competencies (using Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competencies), and the level of sophistication in the language using Blooms taxonomy. The thematic analysis provides strong evidence that different activity types result in students being more likely to reflect upon specific competencies. The deeper Bloom analysis showed that generally the activity types that have reflections skewed towards higher Bloom levels are those that involve project activities. We conclude that those activities that require student-driven exploration are the most likely to engage students in thinking about the nature of real-world engineering practice.

Purpose: In education concerning environmental issues, there are two predominant currents in the world, environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). ESD is the formal commitment and therefore promoted by the United Nations, to ensure that countries achieve sustainable development. In contrast, EE was the first educational trend with an environmental protection approach. The purpose of this systematic review that seeks to show whether the migration from EE to ESD is being effective and welcomed by researchers and especially by universities is presented. With the above, a global panorama can be provided, where the regions that choose each model can be identified. In the same sense, it was sought to determine which of the two currents is more accepted within engineering education. Design/methodology/approach: The review followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyzes parameters for systematic reviews. In total, 198 papers indexed in Scopus, Science Direct, ERIC and Scielo were analyzed. With the results, the advancement of ESD and the state of the EE by regions in the world were identified. Findings: It was possible to categorize the geographical regions that host either of the two EE or ESD currents. It is important to note that ESD has gained more strength from the decade of ESD proposed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. For its part, EE has greater historical roots in some regions of the planet. In turn, there is evidence of a limited number of publications on the design and revision of study plans in engineering. Originality/value: Through this systematic literature review, the regions of the world that are clinging to EE and those that have taken the path of ESD could be distinguished. Moreover, specific cases in engineering where ESD has been involved were noted.

In Australian universities, mathematics is often an essential core subject for disciplines such as engineering, information technology and science. These first-year mathematics subjects may have large enrolments of which a significant number fail the subject and repeat. While interventions to retain students are common, those who have failed before and are repeating the subject are often overlooked. In this paper, we undertook a statistical analysis based on demographic and performance data of six cohorts of students undertaking a first-year university-level mathematics subject. We found that pass rates for students on their second attempt were significantly lower than pass rates for students enrolled on their first attempt, and that age, degree enrolled in and pathway into university were predictors for who was more likely to repeat. Students in their second attempt were less likely to complete all assessment items and were more than twice as likely not to attend the final exam. We argue for an increased focus on and efforts targeting repeating students; that demographic data are used to predict students likely to repeat before they have failed a subject, and that this group of students, as well as those repeating, are supported to increase their chances to pass.

Purpose: As part of the Co-Operative Education Program (CEP) under study, a Work-integrated Learning (WIL) student engagement framework is presented. The framework focusses on the effectiveness of the WIL program with real-world assessment tasks to prepare students for graduate employment. In order to evaluate the level at which the engineering graduates are work-ready, an analysis of qualitative and quantitative survey data from CQU students, employers and data from other sources was undertaken. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: WIL is an effective pedagogical strategy employed in engineering curriculum to engage students with workplace partners and engineering practices. However, little is known about the problems exist in the WIL processes including insufficient resources and support for mentoring students. On overcoming the problems, an effective collaboration between students, universities and engineering workplaces provides an enhanced engagement experience and enables students' work-ready skills. Central Queensland University (CQU)'s Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) and Diploma of Professional Practice (Co-op) students participate in two 6-month WIL placements over the course of their university studies. Findings: To identify the impact of the co-operative education model on graduate outcomes, an analysis of student assessment data from 2016 to 2018 showed that the student employability indicators were consistently above the national average of graduate engineering students. All areas such as knowledge base, engineering ability and professional attributes, students' performance were rated at or above the average of a graduate engineer by employers. Originality/value: As part of practice assessment, engineering workplace employers provide an evaluation of students' performance against the Engineers Australia (EA) Stage 1 Competency Standard for Professional Engineers, involving sixteen mandatory elements in the areas of knowledge and skill base, engineering application ability, and professional and personal attributes.

Mapping the curriculum of a professional degree to the associated competency standard ensures graduates have the competence to perform as professionals. Existing approaches to competence mapping vary greatly in depth, complexity, and effectiveness, and a standardised approach remains elusive. This paper describes a new mapping software tool that streamlines and standardises the competency mapping process. The available analytics facilitate ongoing programme review, management, and accreditation. The complete mapping and analysis of an Australian mechanical engineering degree programme is described as a case study. Each subject is mapped by evaluating the amount and depth of competence development present. Combining subject results then enables highly detailed programme level analysis. The mapping process is designed to be administratively light, with aspects of professional development embedded in the software. The effective competence mapping described in this paper enables quantification of learning within a professional degree programme, and provides a mechanism for holistic programme improvement.

Problem solving and researching are connected activities in the engineering profession and across education. The empirical research presented in this paper considered the effectiveness for teaching and learning of a model that was based on this connection and derived from the parameters of the Research Skill Development framework. The model, devised by students for students, is called the Optimising Problem Solving (OPS) pentagon, and was piloted in a large first-year engineering course in 2014-2015 and in another university in the first half of 2016. This article presents data from formal research conducted on the 2016 offering of the course gathered from pre (n=221) and post (n=169) surveys, and semi-structured interviews of students (n=5) and student/tutors (n=5) sixteen months after course completion. Statistically significant (p < 0.01) changes from pre to post in items with medium to large effect sizes provided student perspectives on which problem-solving skills improved, and the interview data provided rich detail on the nature of changes and how these changes were effected. For the 2016 cohort studied, our evidence suggests that use of the OPS pentagon was associated with improved student problem-solving skills, and tutors' capacity to teach problem solving.

This paper outlines the subjective and quantitative outcomes of the introduction of the flipped classroom approach to two engineering subjects at the University of Melbourne. In this approach, lectures are delivered online as opposed to the traditional method of being provided in person. To facilitate learning, after each part of an online lecture, students completed an activity to reflect upon and review the content via compulsory questionnaires. Students would then attend formal classes in person (e.g., workshops) in which they would participate in interactive and collaborative activities related to the online lecture material. Surveys were provided to the students at the beginning of the semester to understand their perceptions of different learning activities. The surveys indicate that students who did well on the questionnaires also did well in the subject with a positive trend between questionnaire scores and final grades in both subjects. The survey results suggest that the flipped classroom method could provide students with better learning outcomes for subjects at the university level if implemented in a way that promotes active and student-centered learning. Some recommendations are provided based on the results of this paper for the implementation of the flipped classroom method for future subjects at the university level.

Engineering education is undergoing a restructuring driven by the needs of an increasingly multidisciplinary engineering profession. At the same time, power systems are transitioning toward future smart grids that will require power engineers with skills outside of the core power engineering domain. Since including new topics in the existing curriculum while maintaining the existing requirements is difficult, this paper proposes a project-based cooperative learning approach to promote soft skills in an engineering course. This paper then shows how to construct a realistic open-ended multidisciplinary problem whose solution requires a wide range of skills, which is not a trivial task. The design and technoeconomic viability assessment of a small-scale photovoltaic battery system is used as a case study. The effectiveness of the approach and students' satisfaction were assessed over two years. Survey results after the first year revealed that the students did not feel sufficiently prepared for multidisciplinary work. After appropriate adjustments in the second year, the survey results improved noticeably. Statistical analysis reveals that the project teaches skills that are complementary to the core domain skills, which confirms the validity of the approach.

Global software engineering education (GSEE) is aimed at providing software engineering (SE) students with knowledge, skills, and understanding of working in globally distributed arrangements so they can be prepared for the global SE (GSE) paradigm. It is important to understand the challenges involved in GSEE for improving the quality and experience of educators and students. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study on the socio-cultural aspects of GSEE. A case study was conducted involving 14 participants from ten different universities in eight countries. The data was analyzed using grounded theory's open coding procedure. The key contributions of this paper are the identification and description of seven dimensions of socio-cultural distance that caused several significant challenges in the courses: 1) language differences; 2) concept of time; 3) attitude toward grades; 4) assumptions about national culture; 5) differences in autonomy; 6) influence of the course lecturer; and 7) work habits. Recommendations from this paper that are expected to benefit GSEE educators and students include: cross-cultural orientation of students prior to the course; use of various strategies to support better comprehension of different English accents (e.g., speaking slowly, replaying recorded video messages, and text chatting); and educators familiarizing themselves and their students with the relevant GSE and GSEE literature.

Project-based learning is a widely used pedagogical strategy in engineering education shown to be effective in fostering problem-solving, design, and teamwork skills. There are distinct benefits to be gained from giving students autonomy in determining the nature and scope of the projects that they wish to undertake, but a lack of expert guidance and of a clear direction at the outset can result in confusion, frustration, and unfulfilled goals. Moreover, engineering schools face the imperative of providing students with opportunities to engage with industry during their courses, which can be difficult to accomplish due to logistical and time constraints. This paper reports on a case study in which undergraduate students of electrical, computer, mechatronics, and telecommunications engineering interacted with representatives from industry to obtain feedback at the inception phase of their design projects. Students pitched their ideas to the industry guests at a virtual "trade fair" held within a hybrid video conferencing and three-dimensional (3-D) virtual world environment, in preparation for the assessable pitches that they had to deliver on campus to a faculty audience. Survey and assessment results attest to the participants' satisfaction as well as to the effectiveness of the approach in improving student self-efficacy and performance. The paper concludes with recommendations for engineering educators looking to implement similar initiatives and a brief outline of the authors' plans for the future.

Professional identity development is central to engineering education and has been an important focus of design for learning. However, little is known about how learners develop different aspects of engineering identity in response to the constraints and enablements of their learning environment. The purpose of this paper is to propose an analytical approach for the exploration of how the learning environment facilitates engineering professional identity practices. We illustrate the application of the Implied Identity approach by looking at a group of four engineering students working collaboratively on a task about sustainability. We apply conversation analysis for an in-depth investigation of students' talk to explore how engineering identities are negotiated. Results show that the group's collaborative processes involve their identification with the engineering profession by excluding aspects of other professions from the (professional) self. This process is mediated by implied identities that are negotiated by participants. Applying this approach enables one to investigate the interplay between learner and learning environment and highlights the role of individuals' agency in relation to the contextual effects.

CSU Engineering is the new civil engineering school at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Established at an institution that has not previously offered Engineering, CSU Engineering has taken the opportunity to design and implement a radically different model for its degree, drawing upon the frontier trends and themes in engineering education globally. The degree commences with a sequence of campus Problem-Based Learning which is followed by a sequence of industry located Workplace Learning. The underpinning technical curriculum is delivered online, on demand in a Netflix-style 'Topic Tree'. This approach allows for Student Engineers (not Engineering Students) to develop their professional identity from the first day of the degree, and to situate their learning in authentic and then actual learning environments. This paper will enumerate the key dimensions of the program, outline how it is implemented, and present early evidence of the success of this approach.

A barrier to using head mounted display (HMD) virtual reality (VR) in education is access to hardware for large classes. This paper compares students' learning when engaging with an HMD VR simulation as the operator and as the observer, to evaluate whether benefits of HMD VR can be achieved without requiring all students to operate the equipment. Postgraduate engineering students (N = 117) completed a safety hazard identification exercise in a workshop. The performance of students who operated and observed was compared. Results showed that students performed similarly in the exercise that followed the simulation whether they operated HMD VR (n = 33) or observed (n = 84). The finding suggests that educators may be able to use HMD VR simulations in classes with a large enrolment, by reducing the need for investment and management of a large number of sets of HMD VR equipment. Implications for practice or policy: (1) Engineering educators can use HMD VR simulations to teach students about safety in design; (2) Engineering students are able to identify safety hazards in a HMD VR simulation effectively whether they are operating the equipment or observing another student in their group operating the VR equipment; (3) One HMD VR set per student group is sufficient; and (4) HMD VR simulations can be used inclusively, even when some students are unable or unwilling to wear the headset.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has a history of producing strong educational results in engineering; however, global society is challenged by highly complex environmental, socio-political and technical problems summarised in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This obliges us to explore educational approaches that address complexity. Yet, confronting complexity is sometimes constrained within PBL structures. This conceptual paper posits practice-based education (PBE) as a whole-of-education approach embracing complexity. We present a PBE framework with three elements: (1) the context of an authentic engineering practice, (2) supporting learners' agency in the process of becoming professionals, and (3) opportunities to work and learn simultaneously. We make the case for innovative engineering education through the implementation of PBE using the case of the Engineering Practice Academy at Swinburne University of Technology. We detail innovations in student experience as a process of becoming, curriculum and assessment, and provide advice on the application of PBE elsewhere.

This paper presents several methods for motivating students taking a power system protection (PSP) course. The paper reviews the laboratory activities developed for the PSP course at Curtin University, Australia; these methods are applicable and can be used for PSP course instruction at any institution. These activities were developed to improve the learning experience of the electrical engineering undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in this course. Initially, the PSP course at Curtin University consisted of lectures and tutorials accompanied by two sessions of software-based simulations and one session of laboratory demonstration. To motivate the students, several computer-based simulations and practical laboratory experiments were developed. PSCAD and ETAP power system analysis software tools are introduced and used to demonstrate the performance and coordination of different protection relays from steady-state and dynamic points of view. Also, a practical setup composed of a LabVolt power system simulator and industrial relays is used to carry out several practical experiments. The experiments help students observe the performance of protection systems for transformers and induction motors during faults and abnormal operating conditions. Finally, the concept of relay testing and commissioning is introduced by relay standalone experiments using a secondary injection relay test set. The results of these activities were evaluated according to the students' satisfaction, comments, total scores, and interest in PSP.

Many approaches to make mathematics relevant to first-year engineering students have been described. These include teaching practical engineering applications, or a close collaboration between engineering and mathematics teaching staff on unit design and teaching. In this paper, we report on a novel approach where we gave higher year engineering and multimedia students the task to "make maths relevant" for first-year students. This approach is novel as we moved away from the traditional thinking that staff should produce these resources to students producing the same. These students have more recently undertaken first-year mathematical study themselves and can also provide a more mature student perspective to the task than first-year students. Two final-year engineering students and three final-year multimedia students worked on this project over the Australian summer term and produced two animated videos showing where concepts taught in first-year mathematics are applied by professional engineers. It is this student perspective on how to make mathematics relevant to first-year students that we investigate in this paper. We analyse interviews with higher year students as well as focus groups with first-year students who had been shown the videos in class, with a focus on answering the following three research questions: (1) How would students demonstrate the relevance of mathematics in engineering? (2) What are first-year students' views on the resources produced for them? (3) Who should produce resources to demonstrate the relevance of mathematics? There seemed to be some disagreement between first- and final-year students as to how the importance of mathematics should be demonstrated in a video. We therefore argue that it should ideally be a collaboration between higher year students and first-year students, with advice from lecturers, to produce such resources.

Research on engineering practice is scarce and sharing of qualitative research data can reduce the effort required for an aspiring researcher to obtain enough data from engineering workplaces to draw generalizable conclusions, both qualitative and quantitative. This paper describes how a large shareable qualitative data set on engineering practices was accumulated from 350 interviews and 12 field studies performed by the principal investigator and by students conducting PhD and capstone research projects. Ethical research practice required that sharing and reuse of qualitative data be considered from the start. The researchers' interests and methods were aligned to maintain sufficient consistency to support subsequent analysis and re-analysis of data. Analysis helped to answer questions of fundamental significance for engineering educators: what do engineers do, and why are the performances of engineering enterprises so different in South Asia compared with similar enterprises in Australia? Analysis also demonstrated the overwhelming significance of technical collaboration in engineering practice. Conceiving engineering practice as a series of technical collaboration performances requires a more elaborate understanding of social interactions than is currently the case in engineering schools. Another finding is that global engineering competency could be better described in terms of "working with people who collaborate differently". Research helped to demonstrate that formal treatment of technical collaboration in an engineering curriculum could help avoid student misconceptions about engineering practice that hinder their subsequent engineering performances.

Co-design is fundamental to humanitarian engineering and increasingly recognised as such in engineering curricula. However, it is challenging to teach, learn, and assess. In this paper, we describe the development and validation of a scenario-based instrument to distinguish novice and expert approaches to co-design in the context of humanitarian engineering. The instrument assesses the extent to which respondents describe stakeholder participation in each of the "scope," "design," and "deliver" phases of the design process, with co-design experts taking a collaborative approach throughout. We analyse and compare responses to the instrument from first-year undergraduate engineering students and experienced humanitarian engineering practitioners. Implications for educators, to use this scenario-based assessment in their own research, teaching, and curriculum development, are discussed in detail.

Contribution: This paper demonstrated on a large scale that explicit articulation of creativity-related learning goals on engineering syllabi is quite limited, and primarily limited to the first year of study. Engineering educators may need to do more to ensure creativity is explicitly addressed as an expected learning outcome within engineering syllabi. Background: Prior studies have shown inclusion of creativity within engineering syllabi and course activities are generally limited. Students may perceive educators do not value creativity, and their studies have limited influence on their creative skills. Studies conflict on whether creativity skills increase over completing an engineering degree. Creativity has been demonstrated to be an important skill for engineering professionals, but one not necessarily appropriately addressed in engineering programs. Few studies have attempted to quantify coverage of creativity material on a nation-wide scale, as opposed to in a single or select few institutions. Research Questions: 1) To what extent do engineering educators explicitly articulate creativity and innovation-related learning goals and material on their course syllabi? and 2) To what extent do engineering educators explicitly articulate exposure to, or instruction in the use of, creativity heuristics within their course syllabi? Methodology: The online publicly accessible course outlines of 1109 compulsory courses from 42 degree programs accredited by two national engineering accreditation bodies were qualitatively analyzed in a two-stage approach using document analysis. Findings: Approximately 2% of compulsory electrical engineering course outlines explicitly articulate creativity-related material; only one course articulated engaging students in using creativity heuristics.

This paper describes in detail a successful training program developed for sessional (part-time or nonpermanent) laboratory demonstrators employed in the Electrical Engineering Department of an Australian university. Such demonstrators play an important role in teaching practical concepts and skills in engineering. The success of the program relies on a centralized approach coordinated by a carefully selected Laboratory Manager responsible for the recruitment, allocation, training, and development of sessional teachers, and for assessing student satisfaction with them. The paper examines the overall impact of the program on these teachers': 1) introducing laboratory material; 2) preparation; 3) communication; 4) interest in student learning; 5) ability to respond to questions; and 6) overall effectiveness. Sessional teacher satisfaction with the training program is also examined, and the data were used to inform the program's further development. The results show that the training program successfully improved the demonstrators' teaching skills and thus led to greater satisfaction and hence learning experience of both students and demonstrators.

This paper presents a new photovoltaic (PV) power systems laboratory module that was developed to experimentally reinforce students' understanding of design principles, operation, and control of photovoltaic power conversion systems. The laboratory module is project-based and is designed to support a renewable energy course. By using MATLAB real-time software tools in combination with digital signal processor (DSP) hardware tools, the module enables students to: 1) design and build dc-dc and dc-ac power converters; 2) design and implement control algorithms for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and voltage and current regulation; and 3) design and fabricate a printed circuit board for voltage and current sensing, isolation, and gate driving. In these hands-on experiments, by designing and building their hardware and software integrated systems themselves, students learn by doing and experience the engineering transformative process of building a product out of an idea. This paper is motivated by the dearth of literature on the application of project-based learning methodology to PV systems. The module description, the pedagogical and evaluation methodologies adopted, and reflections on the implementations are discussed.

With the increasing challenges facing professional engineers working in more complex, global and interdisciplinary contexts, different approaches to understanding how engineers practice and learn are necessary. This paper draws on recent research in the social sciences from the field of workplace learning, to suggest that a practice-theory perspective on engineers' professional learning is fruitful. It shifts the focus from the attributes of the individual learner (knowledge, skills and attitudes) to the attributes of the practice (interactions, materiality, opportunities and challenges). Learning is thus more than the technical "acquisition" and "transfer" of knowledge, but a complex bundle of activities, that is, social, material, embodied and emerging. The paper is illustrated with examples from a research study of the learning of experienced engineers in the construction industry to demonstrate common practices--site walks and design review meetings--in which learning takes place.

Laboratories are generally regarded as critical to engineering education, and yet educational institutions face significant challenges in developing and maintaining high-quality laboratory facilities. Remote laboratories are increasingly being explored as a partial solution to this challenge, with research showing that--for the right learning outcomes--they can be viable adjuncts or alternatives to conventional hands-on laboratories. One consequential opportunity arising from the inherent support for distributed access is the possibility of cross-institutional shared facilities. While both technical feasibility and pedagogic implications of remote laboratories have been well studied within the literature, the organisational and logistical issues associated with shared facilities have received limited consideration. This paper uses an existing national-scale laboratory sharing initiative, along with a related survey and laboratory sharing data, to analyse a range of factors that can affect engagement in laboratory sharing. The paper also discusses the implications for supporting ongoing laboratory sharing.

Collaboration is an increasingly important and difficult skill for graduate engineers to develop. While universities provide some measures of collaboration ability of students on graduation, there is still some dissatisfaction with the level of preparedness of students for collaborative activity in the workplace. This paper presents a case study of a first year engineering cohort of more than 350 students to discuss the value of improving both the measures and definitions of collaborative ability on graduation of engineering students in a blended learning context. Research methods from student approaches to learning research and social network analysis are adopted to provide experiential and mathematical evidence of successful collaboration. The results provide a characterization of groups of students with respect to their approach to collaboration and the features most common in productively collaborative students. The discussion has implications for teaching, course design, and how universities define and measure collaborative ability of students.

Purpose: Sustainability within tertiary curriculum is hard to measure and often perceived to be illusive in nature. Existing higher education sustainability assessment tools rarely focus on the curriculum. This paper aims to establish and implement a tool that can measure sustainability integration within curriculum. The Faculty of Engineering and IT (FEIT) at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is used as a case study. Design/methodology/approach: A set of seven sustainability competencies are identified by means of a systematic literature review as the current knowledge of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) competencies. ESD competency integration into the curriculum is assessed by implementing a two-tier scanning mechanism. In the first step, subject outlines (SOs) are used to identify sustainable subject learning outcomes (SLOs) and assessment learning outcomes (ALOs). Step 2 involves analysing ALOs and SLOs for constructive alignment with student experience. SPSS, a statistical software, is then used to statistically reflect the results. Findings: An initial scan of SOs found that stated ESD outcomes made up 22.4 per cent of FEIT undergraduate courses. A more detailed investigation which involved assessing subject material and student experience for the seven ESD outcomes resulted in a 7.7 per cent sustainability integration into the FEIT undergraduate courses. SPSS produced tables showing individual competency distribution over course candidature year. Lifecycle assessment was invisible from the curriculum. Research limitations/implications Case study outcomes are limited to UTS, and therefore, specific-study outcomes cannot be generalised. This study attempted to trace sustainability learning outcomes through the curriculum. However, a more detailed study should also assess subject pedagogy and artefacts as these may enable or inhibit sustainability competency. Originality/value: Study developed several methods to establish and evaluate subject level ESD claims. Academic staff and management are able to replicate methods of this study to map ESD within their courses, schools and/or faculties triggering conversation around ESD's actual integration within curriculum. Based on ESD distribution, specific intervention recommendations are proposed.