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Within the Master's course "Civil Engineering" at TU Darmstadt, a project has to be carried out. In the winter term 2018/2019 this was the design and fabrication of a bridge spanning 6 m and made entirely from paper. Students had to find bridge types suitable for the use of paper, develop and optimise cross sections and bracing systems and furthermore prove the load bearing capacity. This included the use of experimental methods explicitly. Finally, the bridge had to be erected crossing a small creek. No materials other than paper, cardboard and glue were allowed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it really better to print everything, including software models, or is it better to view them on screen? With the ever increasing complexity of software systems, software modeling is integral to software development. Software models facilitate and automate many activities during development, such as code and test case generation. However, a core goal of software modeling is to communicate and collaborate. Software models are presented to team members on many mediums and two of the most common mediums are paper and computer screens. Reading from paper or screen is ostensibly considered to have the same effect on model comprehension. However, the literature on text reading has indicated that the reading experiences can be very different which in turn effects various metrics related to reader performance. This paper reports on an experiment that was conducted to investigate the effect of reading software models on paper in comparison with reading them on a computer screen with respect to cognitive effectiveness. Cognitive effectiveness here refers to the ease by which a model reader can read a model. The experiment used a total of 74 software engineering students as subjects. The experiment results provide strong evidence that displaying diagrams on a screen allows subjects to read them quicker. There is also evidence that indicates that on screen viewing induces fewer reading errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is an important skill for engineers but many students face a lack of experience in idea generation, often compounded by low-self efficacy towards creativity. Providing students with online training modules has been suggested as one solution. However, the literature demonstrates using a computer can influence performance and self-efficacy in a different manner to using pen-and-paper. There is a current lack of research on whether computers may influence self-efficacy during idea generation tasks. Two experiments involving computer-based and pen-and-paper groups were designed. Groups were provided with templates that guided them through the process of applying an idea generation technique and were given sixteen minutes to generate ideas to solve a presented problem. Results revealed that students' performance was similar and using a computer does not negatively influence self-efficacy. This shows that students can engage in idea generation learning tasks using computer-based modes without negatively influencing performance or self-efficacy, suggesting an avenue for educators to engage students with building creativity skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the evaluation of the alpha version of a gamified tool called Call for Papers: The Game (CfP:TG), specially designed for teaching scientific writing in the training of future engineers. A non-probabilistic convenience sampling was carried out with the participation of engineering students from a Peruvian public university. The short version of the user experience questionnaire (UEQ) was applied, and usability was qualitatively evaluated. The main results indicate that the Pragmatic Quality of CfP:TG is in the neutral range with a value of 0.729, and the Hedonic Quality receives a positive evaluation with a value of 1.089. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a need for further studies on students' learning of Differential Equations (DEs), especially in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. Research on the mathematical education of engineers shows a conflict between students' demands for practical, contextualized pedagogies and the need for abstract reasoning and appropriate use of mathematical results. Few papers focus on engineering students' interpretation of theorems and their use as tools in argumentation and problem-solving. This paper takes a sociocultural stance on learning and employs dialogical inquiry – a methodology rooted in Bakhtinian theory, newly developed for collaborative inquiry and qualitative data analysis – to investigate the meanings that senior engineering students made while working on a task designed to evaluate their understanding of Existence and Uniqueness Theorems (EUTs) of solutions of DEs. We identified two important epistemological disconnections that explain the difficulties that some of our students faced in making meaning of solutions of DEs and the EUT. • There is a need for more studies on the learning of Differential Equations (DEs). • Few research papers focus on students' meaning-making of theoretical results in DEs. • Dialogical inquiry methodology was used to analyze students' meaning-making processes. • Two epistemological disconnections were found that explain students' difficulties. • The use of warrants in students' dialogue was important in their meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective communication is pivotal to professional success in civil engineering. However, rural students often face unique challenges in mastering oral communication, especially in English. This study seeks to examine the challenges faced by engineering students from rural backgrounds when speaking English and the underlying reasons for these difficulties. This paper implemented specific tasks inspired by task-based language teaching methodology in the study of participants to analyze their speaking challenges and their root causes. The findings revealed that speaking English posed challenges primarily due to fear of errors, anxiety, shyness and low confidence levels. This paper proposes solutions, such as creating a supportive environment and promoting regular English communication, to address these issues. The research highlights the transformative impact of effective communication and calls for further studies to refine and expand these educational strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The importance of thriving is well-established, but little is known about thriving for undergraduate engineering students. We introduce engineering thriving as the process by which engineering students develop optimal functioning in undergraduate engineering programs. Since thriving is currently underexplored in the engineering education literature, we investigated the larger body of literature on engineering student success. Purpose: We introduce the concept of engineering thriving to synthesize the largely discrete existing bodies of literature on engineering student success to bring together many different perspectives, methodological approaches, and findings that shape our understanding of engineering thriving. Our work on thriving unites disparate lines of research on engineering student success, challenges the assumption that addressing barriers automatically leads to success, and strives to change the way engineering education views student success. Scope/Method: We used the scoping literature review method to investigate papers on undergraduate engineering student success. Four databases were searched, yielding 726 initial papers that studied separate dimensions of engineering student success, such as academic, personal, cognitive, and behavioral. We integrated the relationships among these dimensions to develop an understanding of engineering thriving. Our final analysis included 68 papers after removing duplicates and applying selection criteria. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that an engineering student thriving includes multiple dimensions of success, involves cyclical processes of growth and adaptation, and consists of synergistic competencies that should ideally be studied together with as many other competencies as possible. These findings support the conclusion that engineering thriving can be understood as helping students manage constantly changing internal and external factors within the broader engineering education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the application of visual-spatial skills in academic disciplines, vocational fields and daily life is becoming more and more prominent, it is of great theoretical and practical significance how to make use of big data and artificial intelligence technology to conduct research on the relationship between visual-spatial skills and students' grades. This paper explores and analyses from the perspective of artificial intelligence, combining students' visual-spatial skills and students' specific attribute characteristics to construct an expert system, which defines the prediction of academic performance as a classification problem corresponding to the five categories of excellent, good, moderate, passing, and weak, respectively, and based on which a deep neural network-based classification prediction model for students' performance is designed. The experimental results show that visual-spatial skills plays an important role in the professional learning of science and engineering students, while the classification model designed in this paper has high accuracy in the grade prediction process. This paper not only helps to fill the gaps in the current research field, but is also expected to provide scientific basis for educational practice and promote the development of the education field in a more intelligent and personalized direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional engineering education (Eng. Ed) has received criticism for restricting student learning and experiences to practical skills development while ignoring the significance of fostering cognitive skills that encourage higher order thinking, criticality, and self-reflexivity. Imaginative education (IE) has emerged as a consideration for replacing such skills focused engineering curricula with interactive, engaging, and student-centered pedagogical approaches. However, existing literature on the topic as well as Egan's (1997) own explanation of the five stages of understanding (somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic) are mainly focused on K-12 contexts, leaving limited resources and insights for higher education contexts. This calls for theoretical and practical expansion of the topic where development and implementation of IE-informed Eng. Ed for adult engineering students remain the focus. To respond to this call, this conceptual paper focuses on two main points. First, it attempts to unpack the theoretical underpinnings of the five stages of IE to understand what each stage means for educators and learners in higher education engineering contexts. Second, after outlining the challenges that traditional Eng. Ed is facing in a globalized world today and the initiatives from the field to address them, it discusses the promises IE can bring to make Eng. Ed more effective, inclusive, and relevant. Overall, the intention in this paper is to turn to the theoretical tensions that may emerge when considering IE as an approach to re-imagine and expand Eng. Ed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing an abstract is a challenging assignment for graduate students as it requires condensing all the extensive research into a few sentences, providing sufficient background knowledge, and presenting findings compellingly to the academic community. This study observes how graduate engineering students cope with writing their abstracts for their first published papers, with a specific focus on metadiscourse. The study is based on the learner corpus of 1,746 abstracts (117,535 words) written by non-native English speakers in English and Serbian during their Master's studies. The research follows Hyland's taxonomy, focusing on interactive frame markers and interactional engagement markers, together with metadiscursive nouns in order to uncover cross-linguistic patterns and pedagogical implications. The comparison of the absolute and relative frequency with statistical significance and log likelihood between Serbian and English sub-corpora demonstrates that students tend to use frame markers with greater frequency in Serbian abstracts than in English ones. Additionally, engagement markers, and especially directives, are used twice as often as frame markers in both sub-corpora, with a higher prevalence in English abstracts. Following the qualitative and quantitative analyses, the findings offer pedagogical implications related to the range of frame markers and metadiscursive nouns used by students to introduce their research aims and the range of engagement markers used to engage readers in their research and thus claim their credibility in academic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to show how graduated engineering students in classical ICT view practically the advent of the QIT. The students do their theses in El.Eng. and ICT and were asked how to implement now or in the future the QIT in their current or future work. Most of them have strictly defined research topics and in some cases the realization stage is advanced. Thus, most of the potential QIT application areas are defined and quite narrow. In such a case, the issue to be considered is the incorporation of QIT components and interfaces into the existing ICT infrastructure, software and hardware alike, and propose a solution as a reasonable functional hybrid system. The QIT components or circuits are not standalone in most cases, they should be somehow incorporated into existing environment, with a measurable added value. Not an easy task indeed. We have to excuse the students if the proposed solutions are not ripe enough. The exercise was proposed as an on-purpose publication workshop, related strictly to the fast and fascinating development of the QIT. The paper is a continuation of publishing exercises with previous groups of students participating in QIT lectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The educator's choice of techniques is intended to foster a strong love of learning. The different methods of learning can improve learners' abilities. The need of pupils to learn cannot be met by only conventional teaching. When pupils graphically answer the provided question, this is clearly seen. This paper studied students' performance for the graph based topic 'Smith Chart' for the course 'Radar and Microwave Engineering' for the third year of engineering students. Total 64 students of the same class considered for the experiment. Video based learning (VBL) is methodology is used in this paper. Total 64 students learn the said chart (Smith Chart) through videos. VBL along with collaborative approach is carried out for experimental group. The two group posttest is carried out. The two group post test results presented in the paper. The assessment is carried out w.r.to Learning Outcomes (LO) and Bloom's Level (BL). The objectives of the study are to introduce and make students understand Smith chart (BL: Understand, LO1); to determine transmission line parameters and impedance along the line (BL: Apply, LO2); to examine the effect of load variations on transmission line parameters. (BL: Analyze, LO3). The results w.r.to LOs and BL are presented in this paper for both control and experimental group. To assess the level of effectiveness of the intervention feedback is taken from experimental group. Almost 96% students liked the activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All new students at the University of Prishtina "Hasan Prishtina", Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, take an Engineering Graphics course in the first semester. The subject is divided into two sections: Technical Drawing and Descriptive Geometry. To teach lectures, professors use didactic equipment such as LCD projectors and drawing on the table. Assistants demonstrate exercises by drawing mechanical parts in the table. In 2014, teachers began using digital presentations with animations in their lectures. They contain developed presentations using PowerPoint software with stepby- step animations of mechanical parts. The paper examines the effectiveness of this methodology from both the student and teacher perspectives. The study is based on a survey of students, teachers' experiences, and a comparison of exam results. The analysis discusses the methodology's effectiveness, presentation quality, knowledge gained, ease of learning, impact on exam pass rate, and other benefits. The following are some key findings from this paper: students accept and favor this teaching methodology; it is more effective than hand drawing; it has a significant impact on exam pass rates; and it is simple to understand the lectures. Teachers like this methodology because it allows for step-by-step explanation with animations; repeating options; presentations are created only once, easy corrections, developing many examples of mechanical parts with less effort, and students can easily access them. The paper contributes to a new teaching methodology for students in their first year of Engineering studies, Bachelor level, in the subject of Engineering Graphics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being a WISE intern has kept Ms. Rice involved with AIChE post-graduation. Jami Summey-Rice was a 2015 AIChE sponsored WISE intern. [Extracted from the article]

The current article used real data to demonstrate the analysis and synthesis of Mixed Methods Research (MMR) data with generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI). I explore how reliable and valid Gen AI data outputs are and how to improve their use. The current content is geared towards enhancing methodological application regardless of field or discipline and includes access to a prompt library and examples of using outputs. The demonstration data used emanated from a study done in South Africa, with a quantitative sample size of 969 first-year engineering students and, for the qualitative part, 14 first-year students. In the current article, I compare my original analysis to ChatGPT results. Generative AI as a mind tool is best used with human insight, and I found this to be especially true when coding qualitative data. ChatGPT produced generic codes if asked to do inductive coding, and the results improved when training the Gen AI on human examples, which led to moderate and significant correlations between human and machine coding. The quantitative analysis was accurate for the descriptive statistics, but the researcher had to use best judgment to select the correct inferential analysis. Quantitative and qualitative analysis should be conducted separately in generative AI before asking the Chatbot for help with mixed methods results. In the current paper, I give guidelines and a tutorial on how to use chatbots in an ethically responsible and scientifically sound manner for research in social and human sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a study on an interdisciplinary curriculum for mechanical engineering. The interdisciplinary strategy presented in the present research involves departments that haven't typically worked well together to provide learners with capstone design opportunities. Teams of students from the computer and mechanical engineering departments cooperate on completing a capstone design project that gets placements from industry. The method of defining relevant design projects that coordinate with the goals of the mechanical engineering curriculum is comprehensive, as well as the amount of involvement of the industrial partner. To demonstrate the interdisciplinary morality of the design projects and how they fulfil the program's goals and objectives, the automotive sector is examined by the students. Finally, the paper focuses on challenges faced by mechanical engineering students, improve their chances of securing placements and concludes with a model interdisciplinary curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the utilization of design thinking process in the entrepreneurship classes, which involves problem-solving approach, creative thinking and procedural steps to solve the problems. The entrepreneurship training classes facilitate the students to address the real-world problem through the real-world skill development activities. Entrepreneurship education leads the students to develop projects with the outcome as societal beneficial product or service. The students' expertise after attending the class will be incredibly useful for resolving the problems which need an immediate focus like Covid-19 and post pandemic situation. The case study discussed in this paper describes the growth of an engineering student into a technopreneur, who uses design thinking to solve the societal problems. This case study comprises the framework as follows: The first framework is based on Outcome Based Education (OBE) and Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) for Batch 1 and 2, and the second framework with Batch 3 on Conceive Design Implement (CDIO) and Operate framework. According to the findings, students of Batch 3 outperformed than the students of Batch 1 and 2 in applying higher order thinking abilities to turn a prototype into a working business model. As a result, the CDIO framework is ideally suited to the development of engineering abilities into the entrepreneurial opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrespective of the branch of study, practical/laboratory courses are integral parts of engineering curriculum. These courses develop the knowledge, skill and attitude of the graduates. It is thus necessary to frame the laboratory experiments, to create a student centric learning environment and to have suitable assessment methodologies to enhance the cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills of the engineering students. This paper proposes a framework of the above three from the authors' perspective for a software laboratory. The proposed framework can be extended to the laboratory/practical with suitable modifications in the Course Outcomes. Also in this paper, a methodology is proposed for converting the scales into marks and also the formula for calculating the marks under various heads (record, viva voce and experiment) is given. Rubrics are defined for the Performance Indicators (PIs) as specified in the Examination Reform Policy of AICTE for the Program Outcomes (POs defined by National Board of Accreditation (NBA), India). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a concept adopted in higher education that is focused on the mode of learning by implementing projects using the concepts studied during a course. This model is now extended even to middle schools. This paper is a case study on the implementation of PBL in the engineering course. PBL implementation has several issues to be considered before offering it to the students. The issues are more related to the faculty and the institution. A survey was carried out among the students and faculty to know the effectiveness of PBL implementation. A set of questions were asked to the students to know the technical and non-technical advantages and limitations of the PBL. Descriptive questions are used to know the general opinion of the students and faculty about PBL. Various observations are made based on the outcome of the survey. As the overall outcome of the survey, the faculty and students are of the opinion that the PBL will enhance the learning outcome of the course, provided sufficient time and resources are available to implement the project and the faculty can guide the students with regular monitoring of the project's progress. Faculty competency in handling the concepts practically, and availability of time and resources are of concern. Both faculty and students felt that PBL must be practiced in the engineering curriculum to enhance the skills of the student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and international bodies have highlighted the need to foster undergraduate engineering students' creative thinking and critical thinking. Case-based learning is a name for a host of pedagogical approaches which are student-centered, requiring the instructor to act as an expert guide rather than as a source of knowledge. These approaches make use of cases, thus contextualizing learning of discipline or practice-specific knowledge. This approach can help facilitate students' development of conceptual understanding and thinking skills, as students work through and reflect on the process of solving cases. Despite the learning benefits of case-based learning, it has not often been implemented in undergraduate engineering education when compared with project- or problem-based learning. This paper outlines our proposal for a case-based learning pedagogical framework which aims to foster undergraduate engineering students' creative and critical thinking. The framework provides scaffolding of the learning process for students using a sequence of case-based learning implementations with varying levels of student autonomy. We begin by providing a theoretical background on problem-solving in engineering, creative thinking, and critical thinking, followed by a review of case-based learning in undergraduate engineering education. Next, we outline our proposed pedagogical framework, including guidelines for instructional design and implementation, as well as practical examples. We then discuss the contributions and limitations of our work. Finally, we discuss potential challenges associated with the implementation of our framework and potential mitigations. This work offers theoretical and practical contributions for developing undergraduate engineering students' creative and critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general purpose of this study was to determine the potential of using a gamified platform in the development of scientific writing skills among engineering students at a Peruvian university. To this end, a gamified web platform named Call for Papers for Engineers was designed. This platform contains mini-games focused on developing reading and writing skills for articles related to the engineering area. A quantitative methodological approach was employed, with a quasi-experimental design involving two groups: an experimental group and a control group, with pre-and post-test measurements. Additionally, the gamified platform was validated through expert judgment, and user satisfaction levels were assessed. The main results indicate that the content developed in the course and the use of the gamified web platform were effective teaching methods, as the students in the experimental group demonstrated higher performance after using the gamified platform compared to the control group. Furthermore, participants in the study expressed satisfaction with the use of this technological resource, finding it motivating and user-friendly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the design and development of a human health monitoring system that could be used for various types of biomedical engineering applications. Our research paper approaches on how we can monitor our health at any place and any point of time. With an improvement in technology and miniaturization of sensors, there have been attempts to utilize the new technology in various areas to improve the quality of human life. One main area of research that has seen an adoption of the technology is the healthcare sector. As a result, this project is an attempt to solve a healthcare problem currently society is facing. The main objective of the project was to design a remote healthcare system. It's comprised of three main parts. The first part being, detection of patient's vitals using sensors, second for sending data to cloud storage and the last part was providing the detected data for remote viewing. Remote viewing of the data enables a doctor or guardian to monitor a patient's health progress away from hospital premises. The Internet of Things (IoT) concepts have been widely used to interconnect the available medical resources and offer smart, reliable, and effective healthcare service to the patients. Health monitoring for active and assisted living is one of the paradigms that can use the IoT advantages to improve the patient's lifestyle. In this project, we have presented an IoT architecture customized for healthcare applications. The aim of the project was to come up with a Remote Health Monitoring System that can be made with locally available sensors with a view to making it affordable if it were to be mass produced. Hence the proposed architecture collects the sensor data through ESP8266 microcontroller and relays it to the cloud where it is processed and analysed for remote viewing. The work presented in this paper is the mini-project work of the under-graduate students of the engineering college guided by their supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the design and development of a short range motion detector based droid. In this digital and automotive day and age, robotics, and IoT produce an impact on human life. One can't just rely on the traditional mode of work in this era. One has to adapt the robotics and keep digging in it, as it's the near future for humans. So to do this there are many aspects to implement automotive in day-to-day life. One such event is to study a robot that follows humans that means which can detect human movement and react as per this movement. The study shows that there are many researchers, scientists, engineers who have worked and still working to improve this human movement detection in robotics. This paper has studied some of the previous work and gave a comparative analysis of the same. The work presented in this paper is the mini-project work of the under-graduate students of the engineering college guided by their supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite many calls for change, and especially change aligned to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) goals, engineering continues to show disparities in the opportunities, experiences, and outcomes of women and people from groups historically marginalized in these fields. In response, institutions have traditionally used change frameworks to both understand and create reform at program, department, or college levels. However, when aiming at DEIJ goals, change frameworks alone do not lead to the desired transformations of systems. Purpose: In this theoretical paper, we develop an integrated framework that draws from three theoretical domains to guide systemic, equity-focused transformation in engineering education. We argue knowledge from three domains—intersectional power, learning, and change—is necessary to account for and address the complexity of DEIJ change projects. This complexity requires a framework that sheds light on interrelated embodiments of power relations, guidance on how to change, including how and why people learn and engage in new practices. Scope: To illustrate the need for and value of such integration, we examine how prior researchers have used theories of power, change, and learning. In doing so, we present a framework for how integration across these domains can occur. In the domain of change, we identified papers on diffusion of innovations and communities of practice. In learning, we identified papers on distributed practice and legitimate peripheral participation. We examined how these papers utilized critical theories of intersectional power, the third domain, in tandem with these theories. We also explored how the choice of a theory (within the domains) can help or hinder the attainment of systematic, equity-focused transformation. Discussion/Conclusion: We drew the three domains together to consider how these, when integrated in the Theories and Research on Intersectional Power, Learning, and Evolutionary Change (TRIPLE Change) Framework, provide a more comprehensive means to envision, guide, and characterize DEIJ change efforts. By integrating learning, change, and intersectional power theories, we increase the capacity of our analyses of systems and open new possibilities for creating more equitable and just systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering institutions offer technical education by designing curriculum based on expected graduate attributes. The ability of undergraduate students (UG) to analyze complex engineering problems is one of the attributes and it is addressed by enabling students to work on certain projects or problems. The research experience during undergraduate studies can enhance the overall educational experience of students. But implementing research activities for undergraduate students can be challenging. To engage UG students, researchers have tried different strategies to enhance the research experience of students. This paper presents a case study in which, third-year students of Electrical Engineering were engaged to analyze the results of the combined economic emission dispatch problem (CEED) reported in past literature. As a part of in-semester-examination (ISE) for the course Power System Operation and Control, the students were given different research papers published in reputed international journals and associated with the CEED problem. The students were asked to identify the main equations, collect supporting data from literature and develop a computer program in MATLAB to analyze results in the research article under study. Each student presented findings on the assigned paper, the computer program developed, with explanations and conclusions. The research findings of all students were appropriately consolidated to prepare the manuscript as a review article for submission to a suitable international journal. The proposed methodology can be easily implemented in other courses by properly defining the scope of research work expected from students. The research experience of students (experimental group) was measured by conducting a test and the results were compared with other students (control group). The results show that students under experiment performed better than other students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proficiency in speaking cannot be acquired without effective listening. Listening and speaking skills are deciding factors for academic growth of engineering students. Engineering students are mostly worried about their placement in top notch companies, thereby they keep on emphasizing more on speaking under the presumption that speaking can be acquired without active listening. They treat listening skill as the secondary skill for acquisition of speaking, which requires special attention by the teacher. Productive skill speaking and receptive one listening are invariably playing a pivotal role for human communication. Second language users of English generally get confused with the incompatibility of writing, speech production and aural skill in English. Receptive skill Listening and Productive skill speaking are incompatible to one another. The prime objective of this paper is to find out whether integrated listening and speaking activities help in developing language competence of engineering graduates or the task and activities of listening and speaking should be done in isolation to achieve the competence of the students in English language. The present paper collected data of different tests namely pre-test and post-test based on different tasks and activities intended for the engineering graduates of an engineering college and the same was analyzed and the result found at the end of the exposition of data revealed that engineering graduates those who practiced activities of listening and speaking in conjunction with one another proved to be successful in acquiring English language competence than the others who practiced the activities of listening and speaking in separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the factor structure of safety culture construct among engineering students at university context and to examine the measurement invariance of this instrument across different socio-demographic groups in a sample of engineering students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Design/methodology/approach: An exploratory online questionnaire was completed by 770 undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students across the UAE. Data were analyzed using a diversified multi-group and a robust and sophisticated cross-validation testing strategy. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test factor structures identified in previous studies. Multi-group invariance testing was conducted to determine the extent to which factor structure is comparable across groups (i.e. gender, educational and experiential background). Findings: Three-factor model was preferred for its parsimony. The results showed that the level of safety awareness and attitude is relatively satisfactory, whereas safety behaviour is inadequate. No significant difference was showed in multi-group invariance between demographic groups. Research limitations/implications: This research is a cross-sectional study and limited to the views of engineering students (informal group). The study would benefit from both informal and formal groups in assessing safety culture at university for a robust empirical evidence. The research highlights relevant implications for policy and program development, by pointing to the need to promote safety culture and mitigate safety-related accidents among engineering students. Originality/value: This paper offers insight into benefit of understanding the level of safety culture among engineering students and extend knowledge of informal group involvement in safety-related accidents at university level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to raise important issues in engineering education in the face of contemporary challenges and demands through the voices of different stakeholders in engineering curricula and in the practice of professional engineering. Several challenges and future perspectives are based on important skills, like soft skills, which are required by employers and include communication, decision-making, problem-solving, leadership and emotional intelligence, as well as the ability to work with people of different backgrounds and apply technical knowledge. A qualitative data analysis of interviews with students, alumni, teachers and employers revealed the demand for more balanced qualified curricula for higher education institutions in the field of engineering. This includes the promotion of collaborative learning spaces, authentic learning experiences based on engaging students in real situations, project-based learning, industrial visits, guest lectures and problem-solving methodologies that are perceived by these stakeholders as essential in the construction of a curriculum, in line with the specific technical competences of each area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The construction site operates under a hazardous environment that requires a high level of understanding in building systems to minimise accidents. However, the current building education generally adopts paper-based learning approaches that lack hands-on experiences. Furthermore, to achieve Industrial Revolution 4.0 in line with any unforeseen pandemic, the most optimum solution is to transition from physical to technological-based building education. This paper aims to address the problems by proposing a game-based virtual reality (GBVR) for building utility inspection training. Design/methodology/approach: The feasibility of the GBVR for building the utility inspection training approach is validated on a sample of undergraduate engineering students through user experience (survey) and performance-based comparisons against traditional paper-based training method. Findings: The results show that the developed GBVR training has higher system usability in terms of visual output and knowledge retention than paper-based training due to visualisation technologies. The GBVR training method has also higher user-friendliness because of the higher motivational and engagement factors through the adoption of virtual reality and game-based learning. Research limitations/implications: GBVR training required a longer training duration and achieved a lower performance score (effectiveness) but can be improved by transitioning into hands-on tasks. This study has the potentials to be extended to vocational training platforms for competency development in the construction workforce by using cutting-edge extended reality technologies. Originality/value: This paper portrays the benefits of integrating virtual reality technology in building education to overcome the low practicality and engagement of paper-based training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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