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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]

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]

Australia needs a stronger workforce over the next three to five years with more qualified engineers and associated professionals with the high-level skills capable of delivering the needs of the advanced manufacturing and maritime industries. Australia’s graduation rates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields are low by international comparison, providing challenges in meeting qualified workforce needs. With a focus on Tasmania, this paper identified the mismatch between current skills and future needs from a literature review, and through semi-structured interviews with companies in these industries, qualitative data on future skills were determined. The results clearly indicate that there is a need for Vocational Education and Training and Higher Education to be flexible in their course offerings, work with industry to ensure that it is delivering consistent and quality learning outcomes, thus creating a culture of communication and collaboration underpinned by mutual understanding of industry and education and training sector needs, possibilities and constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If any engineering courses are unlikely to be transferable between Australasian and overseas universities, one could argue that civil engineering capstone design courses with a strong practical engineering focus would be the least likely. This analysis considers two capstone design courses in the US and New Zealand. The analysis examines the approaches each university has taken to improve design education through simulating professional practice. The two approaches are superficially very different with different course structure and course requirements. In addition the emphasis on site and project, and the consequent dependence on country-specific matters related to regulation and codes, would lead one to expect low transferability. Closer analysis shows that the learning objectives of the courses are relatively similar and that the relationship between site and design are key for both. The challenges faced by the two approaches have much in common, reflecting similar student experiences, and so high transferability. The paper provides details on learning objectives and challenges faced at the two programs to aid others who wish to analyse capstone design experiences across multiple universities. The conclusion is that transferability between these two design experiences is high. The implication is that, through similar forces for educational change in both countries, internationalisation of engineering education is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]