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The use of narrative is common in many liberal art, medicine, law and education courses but not, a literature review suggests, in engineering. This paper outlines the benefits that narrative was found to bring to the delivery of engineering undergraduate courses in ill-defined domains. The narrative rich learning intervention described in this paper was designed to increase levels of student engagement, motivation, and ability to accept the validity of non-optimal solutions to indeterminate engineering problems. The outcomes were qualitatively evaluated using student feedback from questionnaires and personal interview supplemented with researcher observations. The results indicated that the intervention was successful in raising levels of student engagement with the course material (Manufacturing Systems) and students' motivation to complete assignments, with an additional benefit of increasing students' appreciation of the interconnections between the various topics covered in the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES) in Cape Town 2019, REES delegates and other researchers are invited to submit original manuscripts for a special issue of AJEE on the theme "Ethics in Engineering Education and Practice". The Editors solicit original manuscripts for a special issue exploring ethics in engineering education and practice. [Extracted from the article]

An ongoing challenge for curriculum development in engineering programmes is ensuring that students graduate with appropriate writing skills. There is a need for effective and efficient integration of writing instruction within the engineering curriculum. Applied linguistics research provides valuable descriptions and understandings of the nature of writing for engineering purposes. This knowledge can be used to develop students' ability to adapt their own writing style to meet the expectations of the context for which they are writing. As such, this paper proposes embedding the Teaching Learning Cycle, a pedagogic model of literacy development, within relevant curriculum approaches already in use in engineering education, with a focus on those that prioritise authentic learning environments. Suggestions for activities to develop writing ability are given in relation to the stages of the cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents and shares findings from a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that was conducted to explore what published evidence exists of how Indigenous perspectives have been incorporated into the Australian tertiary engineering curriculum. The importance of embedding these perspectives into engineering education is known as it provides holistic and authentic learning experiences, reflects real world and industry practices, and better equips graduates. Engineers must competently demonstrate understanding of, and ethical conduct for, social and community duties. In order to provide graduates with the knowledge and awareness of how engineering practices affect human, societal, and environmental demands, it is becoming increasingly important to emphasise the human elements of engineering. The SLR resulted in 27 included results which highlighted six reoccurring themes, vital for the shared success when embedding Indigenous perspectives. This included community engagement, capacity building for engineering educators, resource repository, storytelling, use of frameworks, and projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australasian Journal of Engineering Education has published its latest issue, which includes the Best Paper award for Volume 27. The winning paper, titled "Influences on U.S. undergraduate engineering students' perceptions of ethics and social responsibility: findings from a longitudinal study," explores how various experiences shape students' views on ethics and social responsibility. The issue also features papers on common engineering activities and competencies, the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) framework, empathy in entrepreneurial engineering, assessment methods, and multi-modal approaches to education research. The journal welcomes new members to its editorial team and expresses gratitude to reviewers and authors. The Editor-in-Chief, Sally A. Male, is a highly accomplished professor in engineering and technology education. [Extracted from the article]

The Engineering Education Research Network in Africa (EERN-Africa) was created to enable connections between practitioners and researchers with a shared interest in African engineering education contexts. Recognising the importance of developing an African voice in the engineering education research space, the EERN-Africa community has interacted in a dynamic and dialogic way with our own teaching and research practices across diverse African contexts, with an ethical commitment to democratic and inclusive community-building. The objective of this paper is to reflect on the current status of the Community of Practice (CoP), and the challenges and opportunities in sustaining and growing the CoP. A collaborative analysis of perspectives on this emerging identity is presented, using an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) methodology and drawing on collective written reflections and discussions. Six broad themes on the value that the CoP has for both individuals and the group were identified: networking, capacity development, emotional support, impact on professional identity, social and environmental impact, and breaking borders. This paper contributes an approach for collaborative capacity-building in EER through a virtual CoP, underpinned by the spirit of ubuntu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 20th century, Engineering Education Research (EER) has been expanding globally as a field, although its identity varies across institutions and countries around the world. This diversity in how EER is experienced across contexts impacts how capability is developed, including identities, knowledge, practices, agendas, funding, and pathways. The theme of 'Engineering Education Research Capability Development' was explored in papers, presentations, and workshops throughout the jointly held 2021 Research in Engineering Education Symposium and Australasian Association for Engineering Education conference. This special issue presents a continuation of that theme. The papers collectively contribute to expanding global understanding of the field, with implications for future capacity building efforts in engineering education practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, Volume 29, Issue 1, features six papers written by authors from Australia, India, and Thailand. One of the papers focuses on the importance of integrating Indigenous perspectives in engineering curricula, while another examines the suitability of final examinations in higher education. Other papers address topics such as developing written communication skills, teaching empathy in engineering practice, and measuring conceptual understanding of technical engineering concepts. The issue also includes a cover image of university students engaging with Indigenous communities in a project-based learning experience. The journal aims to provide valuable insights and resources for engineering educators and researchers. [Extracted from the article]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue in topics including engineering educators, engineering students performance and university entrance examinations.

The Conceiving – Designing – Implementing – Operating (CDIO) Initiative identifies itself as a global educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers. The purpose of this systematic review is to provide an overview of trends and to consider how these may be optimised for the continued evolution of the initiative. This systematic review follows PRISMA guidelines and is preregistered on The Open Science Framework (OSF). The review includes all publications within the CDIO knowledge library between 2010 and 2020 (N = 898). Each of the publications was categorised as Advances in CDIO, CDIO Implementation and Engineering Educational Research. The initial screening identified the popularity of publishing articles discussing CDIO implementation and the notable decline in CDIO publications. A second screening took place that included all the publications in the Engineering Educational Research category. Some of the findings include: 1) 43% of publications have links with Nordic institutions. 2) Sweden is the most active country. 3) 81% of the publications are completed collaboratively; however, only 22% are cross institutional collaborations. The paper concludes with three main suggestions for future research: 1) Enhancing evidence-based practice 2) Support of blended learning research and 3) Further development of collaboration & replication efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the lack of a unified approach to understanding engineering practice by developing and presenting a taxonomy of common engineering activities. The taxonomy consists of 86 common engineering activities linked to 17 engineering competencies and the 11 International Engineering Alliance graduate attributes. The list of activities was developed using a six-step process, including multiple systematic literature searches and surveying engineers. The taxonomy provides a critical foundation for better understanding what engineers do, particularly in the Australian and New Zealand context. The taxonomy has potential utility in both engineering practice research and engineering education curriculum reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the challenges faced in engineering education, one on competency deficiencies of engineering graduates and one on professional development for engineers.

This paper presents the preliminary results of a multi-phased qualitative investigation of continuing professional learning. The study focused on the identification of common engineering practices that contribute to learning. This paper examines a particular practice, that of the site-walk. It draws on practice theory, an emerging set of conceptual resources used in workplace learning research. Data was elicited via qualitative methods such as interviews, focus groups and site visits with experienced engineers employed in a large Australian engineering company. It was analysed using the lens of practice theory. The findings suggest that site-walks, while an everyday practice for engineers, are also highly learning-rich. This understanding has implications for continual professional learning, and for educators of novice engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning styles of most engineering students and teaching styles of most engineering academic staff are incompatible in several dimensions. Many or most engineering students are visual, sensing, inductive and active, whereas engineering education is mostly verbal (auditory), abstract (intuitive), deductive, passive and sequential. These mismatches lead to poor student performance, professorial frustration and a barrier to produce many potentially excellent engineers. The modern method of engineering education involves contemporary teaching and learning practices using project and program based learning, work integrated learning and integrative learning approaches. Project-based learning (PBL) is acknowledged as a collaborative, progressive, student-centred, interactive, active and deep learning approach. The paper investigates the learning styles of engineering students, teaching approaches of engineering academic staff, the role of smart technologies and their applications for the implementation of PBL in engineering education at the United Arab Emirates University. Students and academic staff were surveyed to understand their learning and teaching styles respectively. Most engineering students are observed active (57%), sensory (71%), visual (83%) and sequential (68%). Surveyed engineering academic staff exhibited their strong preference to expert, delegator and facilitator style of teaching. Students were observed to use different educational technologies frequently and approximately 52% students were identified using electronic media and technology as their learning resources. Only 22% of students indicated small group work as their learning resources, which indicates lack of collaborative learning of students. Previous studies discovered that PBL approach prefers facilitator style of teaching rather than expert or delegator styles. The paper discusses the improvement of PBL in engineering education through understanding of learning and teaching styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the use of collaborative secondary data analysis (SDA) as a tool for building capacity in engineering education research. We first characterise the value of collaborative SDA as a tool to help emerging researchers develop skills in qualitative data analysis. We then describe an ongoing collaboration that involves a series of workshops as well as two pilot projects that seek to develop and test frameworks and practices for SDA in engineering education research. We identify emerging benefits and practical challenges associated with implementing SDA as a capacity building tool, and conclude with a discussion of future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there have been improvements in Australian engineering education since the 1990s, there are still strong concerns that more progress needs to be made, particularly in the areas of developing graduate competencies and in outcomes-based curricula. This paper comments on the findings from a two-day Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded forum that sought to establish a shared understanding with the thee stakeholders (students, academics and industry) about how to achieve a design-based engineering curriculum. This paper reports on the findings from the first day's activities, and reveals that there is a shared desire for design and project-based curricula that would encourage the development of the "three-dimensional" graduate: one who has technical, personal, and professional and systems-thinking/design-based competence. In addition, the data also reveal industry willingness to engage in the engineering curriculum to enhance authentic learning experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent report by the Foundation for Young Australians that derived from an analysis of 4.2 million job advertisements in Australia from 2012 to 2015, revealed that the demand for professionals possessing creative problem-solving skills grew by 249%. This paper reflects on the successes of engineering educators in developing creative graduates and discusses the means to instil the skills of creative problem-solving. It considers research evidence of the suitability of heuristics (methods) for problem framing and idea generation that are sourced from the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) for enhancing the creative problem-solving skills of engineering students. Twelve TRIZ heuristics are considered. A repository of TRIZ educatinal materials (TRIZ Repository) is introduced. The outcomes of four studies from Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand that embedded educational materials offered by the TRIZ Repository into existing courses are presented. This paper concludes that TRIZ heuristics are suitable for embedding into courses that require students to tackle open-ended problems. As demonstrated by the studies, even one class devoted to a TRIZ heuristic can statistically significantly enhance students' creative problem-solving self-efficacy. The TRIZ Repository of educational materials may enable many engineering educators to instil creative problem-solving into their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities throughout the world are realigning engineering education by integrating the impact and importance the profession has on humanity, society and the natural environment. Amongst western universities it is common practice for the engineering programs to have ethics and sustainability embedded within most professional practice courses. Western universities are now understanding the important role cultural, social and emotional intelligence play in producing holistic 21st century engineers. Universities are supporting and fostering fieldtrips to resource-constrained communities, exposing students to real-world problems and finding solutions not necessarily typical in western environments. This, to a certain degree, has helped promote the concept of the Humanitarian Engineer. However, many activities run the risk of disempowering communities and incorrectly promote neo-colonialism as a positive concept to students: the exact opposite of what universities should be striving to achieve. This paper explores the concept of voluntourism and the need for holistic and sustainable solutions for universities to produce culturally, socially and emotionally intelligent engineers with a strong depth of technical knowledge. The paper provides case studies of different programs, highlighting different methods of service-learning and community empowerment. The paper provides a framework to assess program suitability to produce holistic 21st century engineering graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade and prompted by the United Nations (UN) 2030 Framework, significant engineering bodies have been calling for education directed towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this paper, the authors reflect on progress to enable SDG knowledge and skills in engineering studies, overviewing key examples of efforts within the global professional engineering and education community, including Australia and the United States of America (the US). Acknowledging differences in language and guidance around the world, the authors discuss the need to provide clear and concise language regarding: 1) statements for desirable graduate attributes, 2) required knowledge and skill (i.e. competency) development, and 3) commentary/guiding elements and indicators. The paper concludes with recommending accreditation bodies and professional societies and colleges make use of current international review processes underway by the International Engineering Alliance (IEA) and the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), to update accreditation and supporting documents to ensure graduates have capacity to deliver solutions for 'thriving humanity and planet' in the twenty-first century. The authors also challenge educators to review and renew their institution's desired graduate attributes and program offerings to ensure curriculum develops capacity for achieving the UN SDG goals, targets and indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when the routine tasks traditionally carried out by engineers are being undertaken by either technicians or technologists with access to powerful IT systems or AI with machine learning algorithms, there is an urgent need to reframe the education of engineering students beyond rote learning. This involves providing a learning framework to support creative problem-solving as specified by many of the Graduate Attributes required by the Washington Accord for accreditation of tertiary engineering degrees. At the same time, there is a growing movement towards STEAM led education that couples the traditional STEM subjects with the Arts in order to produce more creative and innovative engineers. Based on experience of developing a new design paper for undergraduate students that meets the needs of a specific group of people in society, this paper explores options to incorporate STEAM style education into engineering degree programs that builds on lessons learnt from the best of professional practice. The result is a multi-disciplinary framework coupled with pedagogical practices from the Arts and Design that focuses learning on the human sciences, natural sciences, craftsmanship and design thinking to provide holistic engineering education under pinned by technical competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fundamental engineering units such as fluid mechanics are usually challenging for students to learn since they are practical and linked with mathematics. Traditional physical laboratories are useful for enhancing students' learning; however, they are expensive and require large space. New technologies such as virtual reality (VR) could benefit students without limiting enrolment capacity or laboratory availability. This paper presents a case study focusing on the development of VR experience for the Fluid Mechanics unit at the School of Engineering, Macquarie University. The VR module is an extension of the physical laboratory session where students use wind tunnel facilities to understand the flow features around an object. 3D computational fluid dynamics simulation datasets for a wing are incorporated into the VR platform that uses SteamVR, Oculus and Ansys/EnSight. A survey is conducted to assess students' opinions about the VR experience. Preliminary feedback was highly positive, as most students (>86%) indicated that the VR module was enjoyable, engaging, and interactive. 37% of students agreed that the VR session directly helps them to improve their performance in the Fluid Mechanics unit, while most students (>93%) like to see more VR sessions in Fluid Mechanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

System design -- a complex multi-dimensional synthesis task -- is a key skill for practising mechatronics engineers. Challenging team projects stimulate engineering students into developing this skill and others, including teamwork, communication and project planning. This paper describes a teaching design that combines project-based learning with problem-based learning. The design of the challenge is specifically tuned to give rise to conflicting engineering constraints and common problems encountered in mechatronics. This paper describes how to use the design process to develop a project-problem framework, and provides a case study in which limited energy economy, sensing and control, and disturbances and uncertainty challenges are emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threshold concepts are transformative disciplinary concepts. They are critical to students' progress and often troublesome for students. In this study we explored two potential threshold concepts: namely "roles of engineers" and "value of learning". Adopting a workshop format, the study trialled strategies that might help students overcome these threshold concepts. During the workshops, second-year students at an Australian university considered their motivations for studying engineering, their perceptions of engineering work, and their life and career identities at that point and into the future. Questions aligned with each activity were designed to determine whether students found these considerations transformative or troublesome. Analysis of students' responses using a threshold concept framework revealed the students to be troubled by their lack of insight about the characteristics of engineering work. Students were also troubled by perceived gaps between the attributes of engineers and their own personal attributes. Further, students sensed a lack of alignment between engineering work, their career goals, and components of their engineering studies. The study draws attention to the need and opportunities for engineering educators to facilitate the development of students' career preview, and to enhance their motivation to learn by linking career relevance to each unit of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moodle (along with other Learning Management Systems), are widely used within the education sector to facilitate content delivery, marking and student feedback. This paper describes a system which is designed to significantly increase efficiency, accuracy and security whilst reducing feedback latency for a laboratory marking environment. The MoodleNFC system described in this paper seeks to answer the question as to how to most efficiently record marks for students in a laboratory environment by considering aspects of efficiency, accuracy, data integrity and Moodle integration. For large laboratory environments the MoodleNFC system saves significant time by removing the need to search for and select the correct student requiring marking - instead a tutor simply scans a student’s ID card which automatically brings up the student record. The system is evaluated based on measured improvements in efficiency, accuracy and on evaluations completed by users of the system. Compared to a paper-based marking system benchmarking has demonstrated that efficiency increases in the order of 50% are attainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student intake in tertiary education has increased in many countries, along with more teaching assistants (TAs) employed to support student learning. Many TAs have disciplinespecific knowledge, but lack knowledge and skills relevant to teaching. This paper outlines a project that aimed at enhancing undergraduate engineering education quality in an Australian university, through a teaching development program for TAs. The program development, delivery, possible impact and implications are discussed. Pre- and post-test results of student satisfaction with learning support (received in classes mainly supported by TAs) indicate a significant increase; this is an indirect measure of the intervention's effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years a Women in Engineering Forum was run in conjunction with the Australasian Association for Engineering Education conference, but in recent years "women in engineering" has fallen off the radar to a large degree. There is a widespread perception that the issues of concern for women have been addressed, and that women are now incorporated into the mainstream of engineering education and the engineering profession. Yet Australia and other western countries still have participation rates for women in engineering education that are lower than any other field of education and that have stagnated or declined for the last decade. This paper reviews a range of recent data and studies to examine the current picture of women in engineering education: the statistics, student experience and faculty issues. It concludes with a look to the future: what still needs to be done? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers practical suggestions for teaching strategies that will assist international students. A case study is presented involving the delivery of an introductory engineering unit at the Perth Institute of Business and Technology. The approach detailed allowed the academic staff to identify areas of concern in students' learning early in the semester. Detecting and addressing these issues led to a significant improvement in preparing these students to meet the exam requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper closely examines factors affecting students' progression in their engineering programs through fieldwork conducted at three Australian universities. To extract clues on how specific teaching methods can be used to maximise learning, the investigation considered factors such as understanding how students take in, process and present information. A number of focus groups were conducted with students, and the data gathered was combined with survey results of students' and academics' learning styles. The paper reports on the process followed and provides some analysis of the gathered data, as part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Associate Fellowship program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the experiences of three academic members of the University of Nottingham Open Online Course (NOOC) and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) team, comprising an engineer (tutor), an engineering education specialist (facilitator) and a specialist in higher education pedagogy (convenor). The paper explores notions of what makes for effective teaching of sustainability within a multidisciplinary online context, and the extent to which this experience has impacted upon personal behaviours and attitudes to sustainability, from an Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD) perspective. Team members’ experiences are further supported by findings from student and learner evaluations of the NOOC and MOOC courses. Key findings of the research include (a) Interdisciplinarity is a strength of the course (b) The course can lead to genuine change in the understanding of sustainability; (c) Teaching sustainability online is different; (d) Involvement in the course impacts upon teaching practices; (e) Cultural and disciplinary diversity within both the course team and the student cohort is a major contributor to the overall sustainable development learning experience in the NOOC/MOOC. It is hoped that the findings of the study will pave the way for engineering and non-engineering educators to explore the potential of integrating sustainability within the modules they teach, via online teaching and learning means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of ethics in engineering education has largely been focused at the curriculum design level. The authors posit that this integration be done at the accreditation level and investigate how ethics may be more extensively incorporated in the documentation of a particular engineering accreditation body's qualification standards. The paper proceeds, by means of a narrative review, to justify an expanded conception of the teaching of ethics within engineering education. It builds a synthesis of contrasting conceptual approaches to the teaching of ethics within engineering and proposes a conceptual framework to guide both regulators and educators to identify and engage with different elements of the ethics across the curriculum within an engineering programme. The South African case study provides a context to engage with existing policy formulation around programme accreditation and to demonstrate the application of the proposed conceptual framework across the graduate attributes so to indicate how ethics might be more comprehensively integrated within a programme. This demonstrates that ethics needs to be repositioned at the centre of the preparation of engineers, rather than at the periphery. The expected consequence of this integration is the more extensive incorporation of ethics within and across accredited engineering programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our contribution is part of a broader study conducted in cooperation with the national accreditation body Engineers Ireland that examined the conceptualisation and education of ethics in engineering programmes in Ireland. The paper is a qualitative examination of the use of case studies in engineering ethics education and includes 23 engineering programmes from 6 higher education institutions in Ireland. The qualitative study aims to determine (RQ1) how cases are selected, (RQ2) the goals envisioned for engineering ethics case instruction, (RQ3) the characteristics of the scenarios employed and (RQ4) the preferred application by instructors. A first finding notes the diverse set of goals and application of ethics case studies. The focus is more on decision-making in professional contexts and less on power relations, equity and the broader societal mission of engineering. The second finding highlights the discrepancy between how instructors employ cases and their preferred application. Engineering ethics cases typically include individualistic, hypothetical and historical scenarios. Nevertheless, instructors favour immersive cases set in real or realistic contexts of practice, containing factual or real-time data, which can provoke students to reflect on broader ethical issues. Considering this aspirational discrepancy, we conclude with recommendations that can guide the development of engineering ethics case instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) is important, commonplace and may be used in staff performance management. The SET literature suggests that class size is a negative systematic influence on SET ratings. In this paper we investigate time-series SET data from a large first-year engineering class where a decline in SET ratings was observed over time as course enrolment increased. We observe a negative halo effect of increasing class size on mean SET ratings and conclude that increasing course enrolment leads to a significant reduction in all mean SET ratings, even when the course learning design remains essentially unchanged. We also find an additional differential effect of increasing course enrolment on mean SET ratings. We observe that the marginal reduction in mean SET ratings for each additional student in the course enrolment is greater for those aspects of the student learning experience that are likely to be most directly impacted by increasing class size. We provide implications for practice from these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Engineering Professional Skills (EPS) are critical for today's engineering careers, their assessment is much more subjective and significantly harder to measure than quantitative disciplinary skills. The differing graduate mobilities required for global, regional, and local engineering have led to the development of several accreditation standards (e.g. the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Washington Accord, Bologna agreement, the Indonesia Accreditation Board for Engineering Education). Although these standards share most of their EPS features, a significant difference exists in the extent to which cultural competency development in relation to local populations is required in the education of engineers. This paper addresses EPS assessment in an Indonesian setting where the curriculum must simultaneously cover both the national (core) curriculum and the local (institutional) curriculum, with the latter requiring (by government decree) awareness of and sensitivity to local requirement issues. The modification of an existing Engineering Professional Skills Assessment (EPSA) rubric to include assessment of the local Indonesia higher education competency is described, and the results of two cycles of action research with Indonesian tertiary students are presented. The curricula activities introduced involved complex scenarios to develop competency with diverse ethical, cultural, ethnic, religious, political, and citizenship views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers often communicate with one another through drawings or sketches and understanding technical information through graphical representations is a skill necessary for engineering practice. Well-developed spatial skills are known to be important to understanding technical drawings and are therefore, important to success in engineering. Unfortunately, of all cognitive processes, spatial skills show robust gender differences, favouring males, which could contribute to the underrepresentation of women in engineering. In this research, we administered a test of spatial cognition to students enrolled in a common 3rd year course in chemical engineering. In a second session, students were given a set of 12 textbook problems from a prerequisite course to solve, to determine if there was a link between scores on a spatial instrument and the number and type of problems solved correctly. Both instruments were scored and statistical analyses were performed. A strong positive correlation (r = 0.59, p < 0.00001) between spatial skills test scores and the number of problems successfully solved by the students was found, confirming the link between spatial skills and engineering problem-solving. This paper describes the findings from this research, including identification of the type of problems where spatial skills appear to play a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors of papers in this special issue, I Agents of Change i , have reported studies that readers will find valuable in informing positive change in engineering education. The Australasian Association for Engineering Education is supporting a new Best Paper Award, of open access to the best paper in the most recentvolume, or to a paper by the first author of the said paper in one of the following three volumes. Open call for papers for a special issue Disrupting Business as Usual Authors are invited to submit full papers to the Journal for a special issue on I Disrupting Business as Usual i , the theme of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education Virtual Conference 2020. [Extracted from the article]

The authors present a position paper suggesting that while there is evidence for change within engineering curricula towards best practice, there are significant barriers primarily at the operational level, which bring into question the likelihood of more widespread adoption of hard won gains. It is argued that transformational change is required which (i) alters the culture of the institution by changing select underlying assumptions and institutional behaviours, processes, and products; (ii) is deep and pervasive, affecting the whole institution; (iii) is intentional; and (iv) occurs over time (Kezar & Eckel, 2002). It is also argued that change leadership of this nature must be distributed, not solely laid at the feet of Deans and Vice Chancellors. A strategy for change is presented based on observations and evidence from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project "Design based curriculum reform within engineering education" and the recently completed ALTC Discipline Scholars' Survey of Engineering Academics grounded in the research for transformational change within businesses, universities and teaching and learning. This model for change proposes the development of a network of change agents built on a brokerage model to improve best practice and leadership capacity through systematically and directly engaging with the strategic/tactical and operational levels of engineering faculties [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a case study on how an established, mature engineering faculty, with a large population of students can make the successful, high risk, step change transition towards the delivery of CDIO objectives: "Graduating engineers who can conceive-design-implement-operate complex value-added engineering systems in a modern team-based environment" (Crawley et al, 2011). The successful results of the project demonstrated the effectiveness of the systems thinking and CDIO approach, and endorsed this as the basis for a major change strategy. Not only did it demonstrate the quality of all the students on the course, their potential and commitment to engineering, but it also demonstrated willingness of the faculty to take a risk and to embrace change. The project scenario opened up an otherwise overlooked teaching resource: that of practitioner lecturers with many years of experience of implementation and operation of major projects. These skills were essential to the scoping, design, planning and implementation of the project as well as giving the backdrop of best practice from industry. Auckland's experience of introducing a major step change may be used as a template for other universities who may wish to follow Auckland's example. This project shows the value of a hearts and minds approach to change as it brought together students, staff and best practice under a multidisciplinary systems thinking and CDIO approach; all united in the interests of reconstructing Christchurch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes our experiences using Active Learning in four first-year computer science and industrial engineering courses at the School of Engineering of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Chile. This work corresponds to the implementation stage of the curriculum reform using a CDIO-based approach currently underway at the School of Engineering. Before this reform, students had only one introductory course to their field of study, meeting one hour a week. After the reform, computer science students take an Introduction to Computer Science course and a Programming Laboratory. Similarly, the industrial engineering program now includes an Introduction to Industrial Engineering and an Engineering Communication course. These courses have been designed using CDIO standards 1, 4 and 8 as guidelines and have been formulated to include active learning in its many forms such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, case studies, small group discussions, oral presentations and reflective memos. The redesign impact was assessed via anonymous student surveys and reflective memos. Our results show improved student understanding of their professional endeavour and increased student motivation for their engineering programs. Student surveys registered high degrees of satisfaction with active learning techniques, working in teams, and receiving immediate feedback from instructors and peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been a proliferation of research published on various engineering teaching and learning issues, there is no research undertaken to deal with issues surrounding the teaching of "service courses". This is surprising when one considers the unique challenges and predicaments faced by engineering staff and students involved in these courses. Anecdotally it would seem their existence is problematic. In this paper we outline pedagogical reform of an electrical engineering service course undertaken at the University of Sydney. This particular service course is comprised of students not only enrolled in electrical engineering but also students mandated to learn a substantial syllabus of engineering principles from other programs and degrees. A combination of routine University of Sydney student evaluations, focus-group interviews and curriculum higher education theory were used to inform pedagogical reform. The reform centred on three main interventions: (i) introduction of formative assessment; (ii) an alignment of outcomes, assessment and curriculum, and (iii) modularisation of the curriculum into three blocks. An evaluation of the service course using routine student evaluations, customised course evaluation questionnaires, and assessment of students' approaches to learning using Biggs' Study Processes Questionnaire for assessing students' deep and surface approaches to learning was conducted. The former confirmed improved levels of student satisfaction and the latter was used to verify that the reforms were associated with deeper learning approaches. The findings and discussion are applicable to other educators facing similar challenges in delivering service courses and also address challenges found more generally across engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the teaching and learning outcomes from a first-year project-based engineering course at the University of New South Wales. The students worked in teams to design and build a device to sequester "CO2" into a reservoir. We present our observation of the peer assessments, performance prediction and diversity of the students. We found that some teams collaborated more effectively than others. We quantified this effectiveness using an online peer assessment that enables students to rate the performance of their teammates. These ratings were incorporated into the assignment of individual marks for group assignments. The analysis of the marks students achieved for various assessments and components of the course is presented. We observed that female students tended to out-perform their peers in both individual and team assessments, and students who did well in individual components of the course also did well in the team components. The use of early assessments to predict performance in later assessments seems to be difficult. However, there is a strong connection between students' results for their design proposal and their results for the final design work. We are able to show statistically a signifi cant improvement for marks for presentations but not for report writing. Anonymous surveys showed that about 90% of students were satisfied with their experience of the course. Students found this course to be challenging and enjoyable, giving them a good start in developing their skills as engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Master of Engineering Practice is a University of Southern Queensland distance education program accredited by Engineers Australia that enables experienced engineering technologists to become professional engineers. This innovative program allows students to use their workplace learning to demonstrate their achievement of the objectives in up to half of the courses in the program. More than 170 students have been admitted to the program since it was first offered in 2004, and 22 have graduated. The paper describes the educational strategies used to develop the program and the flexible teaching and assessment approaches used to manage student diversity and facilitate student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering degree programs are notorious for placing considerable demands upon their students. Balancing study and work is a challenge faced by an increasing number of undergraduate students, and this balancing act can be stressful. This paper presents data gathered from first-year engineering students regarding their perceptions of their levels of stress and workload throughout a semester of study. Stress is investigated both as an absolute measure, and also as a measure relative to the students' perception of "normal". These data show that there is considerable variation in the perceptions of the cohort. There is a proportion of the cohort that are always highly stressed; similarly there is a proportion that never find themselves stressed at all. More importantly, the data shows that while stress and workload are linked, they are not equivalent. Relative stress does not always match absolute stress - there are students who are very stressed, but for whom this is normal; similarly there are students who are only slightly stressed, but for whom this is an increase on their usual non-stressed state. Students' reported levels of workload were more variable than the measures of stress, suggesting that the relationship between stress and workload is more complex than simply "more work equals more stress". Their self-reported levels of workload and stress are compared to each other and to the number of hours reported for study and paid employment. This comparison shows that while in general workload and stress are indeed linked, there is a substantial proportion of the cohort for whom these factors appear to be independent. In particular the link between absolute stress and workload appears weaker, suggesting that the issue may not be the actual level of stress, but rather the students' perceptions of what constitutes a "normal" workload at a university level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' experiences of their learning and the teaching in the subjects they are studying are one of the more ubiquitous sources of information about the quality of teaching for institutions and individual academics. The results are used in the design of new courses and degree programs, as evidence for promotions and awards, and for various policy decisions. The study described in this paper used 45,467 responses from engineering students to a standardised student feedback questionnaire over 7 years, to explore factors associated with variation in students' learning experiences, including their experience of the quality of their teaching and their overall satisfaction with their subjects. Of the factors considered, year of study, class size and coordinators' professional development were significantly related with student satisfaction and learning experiences. Engineering sub-discipline, coordinators' research activity, nature of employment and gender did not show any significant relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on engineering education topics which include the development of an innovative VoIP student attendance recording application, labour force outcomes for engineering graduates in Australia and making problem-solving in engineering-mechanics visible to first-year engineering students.

The number of undergraduate degree programmes incorporating humanitarian engineering experiences and curriculum has increased significantly since the turn of the century. This paper describes a humanitarian engineering pathway embedded across all four years of an undergraduate engineering degree at an Australian university. Student participation in the pathway and their motivations were evaluated from quantitative enrolment data and anonymous surveys and compared to an overall student baseline. This found a higher percentage of students engaged in humanitarian engineering were female, domestic and involved in extra-curricular activities compared to the overall student baseline. Most students engaging with the pathway were motivated by opportunities to apply their engineering; some highlighting this was to have an impact on societal issues. Recommendations are made for research to further understand student engagement as well as suggestions for initiatives to address potential challenges as humanitarian engineering education continues to expand across Australasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics are by far more responsive to social, economic and technological changes and therefore academic identity must be resilient and flexible in order to fully engage with diverse and numerous purposes of academic institutions. Considering the fierce competition in the UK higher education sector, the demand for an academic curriculum to be globally relevant is greater than ever. In this paper, new challenges within the British higher education setting in globally competitive environment are discussed. The railway engineering curriculum within civil engineering programme at the University of Birmingham (accredited by the Institution of Civil Engineers, UK) is critically reviewed and evaluated, aiming at enhancing core technical skills alongside those required for systems thinking solutions. Comparative evaluations considering learning outcomes and industry expectation are carried out. Based on the review and evaluation using both academic and industry insights, some insights and recommendations to improve student experience and to enhance learning environment with the emphasis on employability, systems thinking approach and industry practice are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on topics related to engineering education which include curriculum assessment for professional accreditation, mentoring young adults in the development of social responsibility, and progress with the professional spine.