Search

This paper describes the results obtained for the affective engagement of students with systems thinking (ST). In prior work, the authors have developed and validated a questionnaire instrument for measuring affective engagement of undergraduate engineering students with ST. This paper presents results obtained when the questionnaire was used with undergraduate students. Two surveys with different versions of the questionnaire, one using positive grammar questions only and the other using a mix of positive and negative constructs, were used to measure the students’ engagement with ST and its relationship with gender, age, and work experience. Each questionnaire version was applied to a different sample, the first, 186 participants, completed the positive grammar version, and, the second group of 163 completed the mixed version. The results show that participants in both studies valued ST in each of the three dimensions of the ST construct. Statistical tests confirmed no significant gender differences in either study. Student engagement with the practical dimension of ST was shown to vary, with statistical significance, with groups of age, years of work experience, and country of the university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on student-learning outcomes indicates that university graduates do not possess important skills required by employers, such as communication, decision-making, problem-solving, leadership, emotional intelligence, social ethics skills as well as the ability to work with people of different backgrounds. Today, engineering graduates are required to work within multicultural and multinational workplace environments, and thus need to possess adequate professional attributes and competencies. This paper elaborates on the missing links between engineering graduate attributes and employers' expectations. It further investigates whether the attributes gained by engineering graduates from Monash University, Australia, meet the expected needs of the industry. The paper also proposes a 3-D Competency Model to address the potential shortfalls of employers' expectations in that regard. [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]

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

The paper starts by emphasising that final year engineering projects are regarded important in the training and education of professional engineers in Australia and Europe. The sources of projects available to students were also mentioned. Some Australian universities insist on individual projects but some not, each with their own reasons. However, it can be argued that all European universities run individual projects. In most cases, whether it is in Australia or Europe, the total load for final year engineering projects is about 6.25% of the load of engineering programmes. Assessment methods were also described. They were all different whether in Australia or Europe but not very significant. It was discovered that literature reviews, oral presentations and written reports or dissertations were important elements in the assessment schemes. Many university staff, in both continents, encouraged students to publish their work in international conferences and journals if the originality of the projects was high. It can be argued that the individual project is most effective in learning outcome; however, the cost involved is also very high and its sustainability in smaller universities in Australia is in doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

The construction industry has been facing a paradigm shift to integrate new construction requirements, most notably the development of advanced technologies, such as environmental management, information technology, and building information modeling. Timely curriculum reform is therefore necessary for construction education to adapt quickly to the paradigm shift. The aim of this paper is to investigate the gaps between educational attainment and job requirements in the Australian construction industry, based on which further curriculum reform can be conducted. A survey is administered to 252 construction graduates. The results suggest that the most significant gaps are related to technical skills for construction and problem-solving skills. The gaps can be categorized into eight groups based on an exploratory factor analysis. The eight groups are construction technology, information technology, problem-solving skills, construction economics, risk management, basic theories, business management, and sustainability science. It is therefore recommended that curriculum reform be conducted to bridge the gaps between educational attainment and job requirements to prepare construction graduates for the competitive and fast-changing construction environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The ability to create a context is essential in writing the introduction of a research article (RA). This study explores the experience of engineering Ph.D. students in Australia, for whom English is an Additional Language (EAL), in using a problem-solution-based writing model to develop context-creating skills in writing RA introductions. Research question: What is the experience of engineering Ph.D. students in creating contexts through explicit learning of a problem-solution-based model for writing RA introductions? Literature review: Genre-based teaching is a common approach in the second language classroom. Recently, a genre-based approach for writing the introduction of engineering RAs has been proposed. The descriptive values of the model, PSP-CaRS, have been shown in corpus studies of published engineering RAs. However, its applicability has not been explored pedagogically. Methodology: Twenty-nine Ph.D. students were asked to respond to a questionnaire nine months after learning the model and reflect on their experience using it. The findings were then corroborated with data obtained from interviews, researcher observation, and writing samples. Results: The findings showed that the participants perceived PSP-CaRS to be useful and they continued using it after nine months despite some difficulties encountered in the writing process. Participants’ responses showed that explicit teaching of PSP-CaRS formed the foundation upon which more competent skills to create contexts were developed through practice and integration of subject knowledge. Discussion: Explicit teaching using a model can impart the basics of genre awareness to students. Once students gained an in-depth understanding of the model by working through their difficulties, they developed better genre awareness, and used the model adaptively to visualize and write their RA introductions. Conclusion: The results confirm the usefulness of the proposed model and reveal how a continuing process of learning and practicing using the model helps students develop their skills to create contexts and enhance their genre awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the process of review, design, and delivery of a course in modern embedded systems, an international collaborative teaching project involving the University of New South Wales (Australia), Manchester University, and Imperial College, London University (United Kingdom). This project, being the first of its kind anywhere in the world, provides a learning environment that replicates the current industrial practice in embedded systems design in an easy and comprehensible setting, an environment where the processor, dedicated coprocessors, and software are all integrated to create a functional system such as used in sophisticated electronic devices, including mobile phones, Web phones, televisions, digital cameras, and personal digital assistants. Such collaborations are important in both reducing development costs in developing up-to-date, and increasingly sophisticated, courses and in addressing pedagogical issues that are common between computer and electrical engineering programs in all academic institutions. To assist students' learning experience, the course is supported with purpose built state-of-the-art programmable hardware and software development platforms, carefully planned laboratory experiments, lecture notes, weekly online quizzes, tutorials, and a companion CD-ROM as a learning tool. Since the introduction of this complete package, students' satisfaction, assessment results, and skills obtained through evaluation and assessment methods have improved markedly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian university campuses are reflecting increased cultural diversity at a time when group work is emphasised as an effective student-centered approach to learning. This paper reports an investigation of differences in rates of verbal interaction by 72 first year male undergraduate engineering students from two ethnic cohorts (Australian-born Anglo-European and overseas-born South East Asian students) during a collaborative group activity. A quantitative methodology was employed. Verbal interactions were recorded under two conditions: mono-ethnic groups containing four students from one ethnic cohort; and bi-ethnic groups made up of two students from each ethnic cohort. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed highly significant differences for the main effects of both Ethnicity and Group Type and also their Interaction. The key finding of this study suggests that the South East Asian students were inhibited in terms of their verbal participation when with Australian students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, an attempt was made to facilitate for engineering undergraduates to come up with innovative ideas by teaching creativity, not simply in a paper and pencil test situation but also in a practical exercise. A total of 64 male engineering undergraduates received three lectures on creativity at the beginning of a course on engineering innovation. Some of them (N=37) also completed a ''creativity'' test: TCT-DP (Urban & Jellen, 1996) and were individually counselled on the basis of test scores. A separate control group (N=21) took the test together with these students, but otherwise did not participate in any way in the study. Upon retesting 6 weeks later the counselled students were more innovative, whereas the control group were simply less inhibited. In addition, machines constructed by the counselled students were more elegant and creative than those of the 27 students who merely attended the lectures. Thus, the training was associated with changes in behaviour not only on the test, but in a practical activity also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics is traditionally considered necessary for engineering courses. Over the last three decades, the mathematics requirements for entry into engineering programmes has steadily weakened in Australia. Further, the mathematics component of engineering programmes has progressively decreased. This research aims to investigate the following two questions. First, is mathematics a barrier for students to complete an engineering programme? And second, is performance in mathematics associated with performance in engineering? We identified the significant factors associated with weighted average mark and the completion status of engineering studies at both an undergraduate level and a Masters level. Of particular interest was the students' mathematical background. Furthermore, a survey of students enrolled in engineering at the University of Western Australia was conducted to obtain more in depth views of student attitudes and perceptions towards how mathematics has affected their engineering studies. Binary logistic models were fitted to the survey data. Additionally, focus group interviews were conducted to gain insight on student perspectives regarding the effectiveness of mathematics teaching in engineering. The results are discussed in relation to the importance of mathematics and statistics for the engineering curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An alternative pedagogical design is discussed that aims to guide engineering students to solve first-order ordinary differential equations (ODEs), and is based on students' learning weaknesses identified from previous teaching and learning activities. This approach supported student's self-enrichment through exploration of relevant resources in ODEs, and guided students towards the choice of their own effective ways for solving ODEs for different problems. This paper presents the practices on designing and delivering solution techniques for first-order linear ODEs using this approach for more than 400 undergraduate engineering students at a regional university in Australia during 2014–2017. The timeline involved initial experimentation in 2014 and 2015, followed by refinements to the pedagogy based on student's feedback. The refined pedagogy was then used for the advanced mathematics course in 2016 and 2017. Significant improvements were made in student's learning outcomes in effectively and accurately solving the first-order linear ODEs over this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we worked with second-year engineering students at an Australian university to examine previously identified threshold concepts within the theoretical framework of Possible Selves. Using workshops as the context for intensive work with students, students were encouraged to consider their future lives and work, including their engineering fears, expectations, and aspirations. The findings revealed many students to have a poor understanding of the realities of engineering work. Moreover, perceived gaps between self-efficacy and the requirements of engineering work appeared to be motivating if students deemed it possible to reduce the gap, but demotivating if they identified a characteristic over which there was perceived to be no control. The study suggests that these engineering students needed more opportunities to explore both the roles of engineers and their own possible selves. Overall, the findings indicate that higher education students may need encouragement and support to explore potential future roles, and they strengthen calls for further research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]