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This paper investigates the ethical and professional responsibilities of engineering Graduate Students (GSs) and Faculty Members (FMs) in relation to Graduate Recruitment Offers (GROs). The authors developed an academic survey for data collection and subsequently evaluated the collected data based on common ethical theories and principles, as well as relevant professional codes of conduct. Based on the survey responses, this study identified the most common driving and preventive reasons for FMs and GSs not to honor a signed GRO. Further, the perception of GSs and FMs in relation to GROs was investigated using statistical methods. Finally, the authors provided an educational framework in the form of a checklist aimed at promoting ethical and professional decision-making as related to GROs. Ultimately, the outcomes of this research can be incorporated into senior seminar courses to enhance engineering undergraduate students' ethical education and promote their ethical thinking as they grow into professional roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the use of smartphones vs. laptops influences students' engagement, behaviour and experience watching academic videos in a collaborative classroom. Experiments were run in authentic teaching sessions with a total of 483 first-year higher education students. The methodology applied is a quasi-experimental design with post-test-only, being the independent variable, the device used to visualise the academic videos. Results indicate that the use of laptops has provided better results in terms of student's engagement with the videos, their collaborative behaviour and satisfaction with the device. Hence, the findings of this research suggest that the type of mobile device used in activities that consider the use of videos in a collaborative class need to be carefully chosen to maximise the student's comfortability – and in consequence, their engagement with the video-based learning activity and their positive behaviour and experience within the collaborative context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking up the notion of engineering as social experimentation, this paper argues that engineering research laboratory directors have a responsibility to inform graduate engineering students who participate in their research projects of the potential broader social dimensions of those projects. Informing engineers-in-the-making of the broader social dimensions of the research they are learning to conduct would help ensure their future capacity to act as ethically responsible social experimenters. The paper also argues that graduate engineers have a right to be informed participants in activities that may have broader social dimensions than are recognized by formal research evaluation or educational processes. The process of obtaining the informed consent of graduate engineering students, if implemented effectively, would thus help ensure both their capacity to act as moral agents and their own moral integrity. Since the eventual outcomes of research can be uncertain, complex, and contested, most traditional institutional frameworks—such as principle-based codes of conduct and risk-benefit frameworks—provide an insufficient basis to inform engineers and citizens. Rather, we recommend an ongoing discursive process that explores a number of different actors, contexts, and scenarios, and that evolves with the social context of the engineering research in question. While this may seem burdensome to the engineering research process, it can be integrated directly into the group research meetings and mentorship activities that typically already go on. Moreover, it can actually be seen to benefit engineering practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite societal expectations that graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines integrate broader impacts into their professional activities, few of them actually receive any formal training in this area. This paper describes a graduate seminar entitled “Broader Impacts of Natural Sciences on Society” taught at the University of Florida in 2006 and 2008. In addition to course goals, recruitment, expectations, format, content, and outcomes, this paper describes challenges and recommendations for others who might want to teach a similar course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss perceptions of the benefits of learner-generated podcasts for supporting postgraduate engineering students in a mathematics-intensive course. The course under study had previously been highlighted as one in which students had struggled to attain knowledge that formed an essential underpinning to their degree programme. Podcasts were used as a means of concretising abstract mathematical knowledge so that students could access and share such concepts in a meaningful way. The experiences of three students (in a single cohort) were examined qualitatively at every stage of the exercise: introduction, pre-test, podcast creation, podcast peer evaluation, post-test, and focus-group session. The data suggest that this specific technique led to improvements in mathematical learning through the analysis of podcasts rather than through the creation of them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Enrolments in postgraduate engineering in Australia include a significant proportion of Asian ESL (English as a Second Language) students, and there is some debate in the literature about whether they are capable of critical appraisal. Content-based discipline-specific EAP (English for Academic Purposes) courses provide an environment for addressing the language, writing, and critical appraisal needs of such students. In particular, there is evidence that a 'sustained' approach to critical appraisal through engaging with engineering content is the best environment for this significant cohort. Despite this, such programmes are relatively rare in higher education partly as a result of the peripheral status of language and academic skills in relation to engineering knowledge and practice. This case study outlines the curriculum framework and rationale for a content-based EAP response to teaching critical appraisal skills and examines evaluative feedback from an open-ended survey of three semester cohorts of students (n=64, 85% response rate) regarding their encounter with critical thinking and practice. The paper argues both that discipline-specific EAP courses are an appropriate place to teach critical appraisal skills and contributes to the debate on the capacity of ESL students to develop this skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six factors for pursuing an engineering postgraduate programme at Griffith University including (i) programme quality; (ii) employment prospects; (iii) practicality; (iv) personal interest; (v) popularity; and (vi) reputation; and 11 factors for not pursuing this engineering programme including (i) employment prospects; (ii) degree of difficulty; (iii) loss of interest; (iv) interaction with classmates and lecturers; (v) financial difficulty; (vi) programme quality; (vii) persuasion from other institutions; (viii) obligation to family; (ix) career change; (x) self-confidence; and (xi) relocation are studied in this paper. A questionnaire survey on factors for pursuing and against pursuing the programme is conducted. Individual interviews are conducted to gather further information and clarification on the survey. F-tests, relative important index values and spectral behaviour of all factors are estimated. It is found that employment prospects and programme quality are the major factors for pursuing and for not pursuing the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]