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CONTEXT Flipped learning is an instructional approach which allows instructors the opportunity to use a blending of online and face to face learning activities. The main affordance of flipped learning is the opportunity to free up class time to allow students and instructors to engage in collaborative learning activities designed to consolidate and deepen conceptual understanding of the subject material. Research has shown that participating in flipped instruction can change the way students approach their studies and improve motivation. PURPOSE OR GOAL We are interested in students’ experience of the flipped environment, particularly their expectations of a learning environment, and the level of responsibility they take for their own learning. The purpose of this analysis is to create a baseline against which future instances of flipped learning can be compared. APPROACH Student perceptions of flipped instruction were investigated through survey responses and observations of students in a first year subject (Engineering Mechanics) a second year subject (Engineering Computations) and a third year subject (Construction Materials) in a Civil Engineering degree programme. In particular, students were asked to explain the impact of the flipped activities on their learning experience including any changes in how they approach their studies or managed their time. OUTCOMES Most students in each of the three subjects agreed that they ‘liked’ flipped instruction compared to the traditional lecture format. The majority of students in each subject also agreed that it is reasonable to expect students to prepare before attending a face to face session. However, some students made strong negative comments demonstrating how the flipped environment did not meet their expectations of how learning should be organised. This study suggests that students in the second and third year subjects were not necessarily showing signs of better self-regulation and time management skills or being

BACKGROUND Engineering education research is still consolidating as a recognised research area in Australian universities. A current project funded by the US National Science Foundation is attempting to develop a taxonomy for engineering education as a research area. Our project takes a slightly different perspective by using a landscape model to describe engineering education as a knowledge domain that includes a variety of areas of endeavour. PURPOSE This paper is motivated by questions around the range of topics being addressed in the AAEE community and as a means of initiating a discussion about how we define, evaluate, understand and move within our research domain. APPROACH This paper reports data collected as part of a wider project examining the peer review process for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) annual conference. During semistructured interviews nineteen participants used one or two coloured adhesive stars to locate their paper on a model of the engineering education research landscape presented in this paper. The location of the stars was then analysed in relation to various elements of the model and the explanations were coded in NVivo 10 for themes relating to the star location. OUTCOMES All participants could locate the topic of their conference paper on the presented model, and articulate clearly why their star belonged in the selected location demonstrating an individual understanding of the focus and outcomes of their research. Not surprisingly most stars were clustered in the `teaching and learning of engineering element or on one of the trajectories leading to it. This reflects that for many participants, their educational publications are inextricably linked to their practice of teaching engineering. Interestingly, there were strong voices from participants across all expertise levels and university types against a perceived move to make the annual AAEE conference focus on theoretical research. This was seen as a

BACKGROUND Formal examinations are often used in engineering classes as the tool to evaluate student learning. These exams are often high stakes assessment tasks and provide no opportunity for feed-forward. Despite academic claims that all topics in their subject are requisite material, students are regularly able to pass these assessment tasks with unsatisfactory, and perhaps even no capacity to demonstrate learning in some topics. Furthermore, while undertaking the exam often highlights to students their learning deficiencies, it typically has no impact on their learning as they rarely receive feedback other than a mark or grade and there is no further opportunity to address these learning gaps. This paper reports on the impact of a two-staged examination process on both student learning and assurance of that learning. PURPOSE The aim of the staged examination process was to improve confidence that students had satisfactory knowledge in all requisite subject topics and to test its capacity to be learning-oriented in that it provides improved opportunities for students to learn while simultaneously increasing the level of learning assurance. DESIGN/METHOD The first stage of the process was an exam that covered all requisite subject topics. This exam consisted of multiple choice questions set at or just above the level of threshold learning outcomes. Students were required to score 80% on this exam to qualify to undertake the second part of the assessment process at a later date. Students used IFAT (Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique) cards for this stage to facilitate immediate feedback as to their strengths and weaknesses. The time between exams allowed students to review identified areas of weakness before attempting the second stage of the exam. Note: while not contributing to their final grade students who failed the first exam were also permitted to undertake the second exam as an opportunity to learn and as a means of evaluating the impact of the process

BACKGROUND The benefits to student learning from participation in formative assessments have been reported by many educational researchers and scholars. This literature reports improved engagement when students see formative activities as being highly relevant and valuable for their learning. However, many academics still report that students are reluctant to participate in a learning activity unless it contributes some marks to their final subject grade. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact on learning of undertaking a series of out-of-class formative learning activities. In addition, for the students that undertook these activities, we are interested in why they chose to participate and what, if any, learning benefits they experienced from participating. In regards to the students that chose not to undertake the activities, we are interested in their reasons for not participating. We are also interested in investigating the impact on students of scaffolding the learning activities used throughout the semester. DESIGN/METHOD For the Autumn 2012 offering of Engineering Mechanics, out-of-class formative learning activities were designed for four topics in the syllabus. These activities required the students to read the relevant section of the textbook and subsequently answer multiple-choice questions provided online including entering comments to explain their chosen answer. While there were no marks allocated to these activities, the instructor did allocate more time in lectures to the material related to questions with the largest variation in responses. Students who answered the online questions could log back on at the end of the submission period to compare their responses to the instructorâs answers and reasoning. At the conclusion of the semester students were asked to complete a survey consisting of both closed and open-ended questions to investigate their perceptions of the effects of the online activities. Descriptive statistics w

BACKGROUND The work described in this paper has emerged from an ALTC/OLT funded project, Exploring Intercultural Competency in Engineering. The project indentified many facets of culture and intercultural competence that go beyond a culture-as-nationality paradigm. It was clear from this work that resources were needed to help engineering educators introduce students to the complex issues of culture as they relate to engineering practice. A set of learning modules focussing on intercultural competence in engineering practice were developed early on in the project. Through the OLT project, these modules have been expanded into a range of resources covering various aspects of culture in engineering. Supporting the resources, an eBook detailing the ins and outs of intercultural competency has also been developed to assist engineering educators to embed opportunities for students to develop skills in unpacking and managing cross-cultural challenges in engineering practice. PURPOSE This paper describes the key principles behind the development of the learning modules, the areas they cover and the eBook developed to support the modules. The paper is intended as an introduction to the approaches and resources and extends an invitation to the community to draw from, and contribute to this initial work.

It is well recognised that changes in the contemporary world demand that professionals continuously learn. Often this continual professional learning takes the shape of formal courses, seminars and other obviously educational events. The starting point of this paper is an acknowledgement that people also learn in the day-to-day practices that constitute their work. Work can be understood as a bundle of practices that are typically shared by most people employed in that profession. For engineers, and experienced engineers in particular, an example might be attending design review meetings, toolbox talks and or carrying out site walks. In this paper we posit that these practices afford important opportunities for professional learning.

BACKGROUND Arguably the most important opportunity to acquire the standards and norms of any discipline and develop researchers' judgement is the peer review process â and this is probably particularly true in an emerging discipline such as engineering education. Ironically, research in many disciplines has established that the review process is deeply flawed in conception as well as (often) in operation, with the American Medical Association asserting that if peer review were a drug it would never be allowed on to the market. And yet university ranking systems for published research, on which all of our careers depend, rely on this flawed instrument. With this in mind we have been examining how members of our community (AAEE) give and respond to reviews with a view to making the process more useful. PURPOSE Reviewing is an inexact and subjective process so it would be misguided to think that somehow inter-rater reliability or some notion of objective âtruthâ may be attained. Instead, we ask what reviewers need to do to provide helpful advice that can help shape norms and standards in the field. DESIGN/METHOD In previous work (Willey et. al. 2011; Jolly et.al. 2011) there appeared to be a need for well-expressed criteria that would guide authors on what a publication should contain and guide reviewers in how judgements should be made. With the help of a Delphi panel made up of 12 international researchers in the field a set of criteria were developed. Volunteers were then sought to apply the criteria to sample texts in an online tool (SPARKplus). Individual interviews with some respondents were then used to clarify participantâs understandings and goals. RESULTS The criteria developed by the Delphi panel are those being used for this conference. The members of the panel particularly approved the âcommentsâ accompanying the criteria per se which were intended primarily as guidance to authors about acceptable practice. Anecdotal evidence to date suggests that authors

Arguably, the most important opportunity to acquire the standards and norms of the discipline and develop researchers' judgement is the peer review process - but this depends on the quality of the reviews. 'Good' feedback - which we take to mean feedback that has the capacity to improve subsequent practice - has been identified as being timely, specific and relevant. Yet often reviews lack these basic qualities. In this paper we report an investigation of the peer review process at the 2010 Australasian Association of Engineering Education (AAEE) conference. Authors at the conference were given the chance to rate their reviews and we subsequently analysed both the nature of the reviews and authors' responses. Findings suggest that the opportunity to use the peer review process to induct people into the field and improve practice is being missed. As in other disciplines there is also ample evidence that the review process does little or nothing to ensure the standard and relevance of conference presentations. It is therefore legitimate to ask whether there may not be better processes to attain these ends and we conclude with some discussion of how the review process may be made more helpful for everyone involved.

We present our work on introducing Adaptive Tutorials in first and second year mechanics courses in Engineering. Adaptive Tutorials are interactive online modules where an Intelligent Tutoring System adapts the instruction level to learners, based on their individual performance. Through an ALTC-funded project, we formed a community of practice of Engineering Mechanics educators from a range of Australian universities. As a team, we began by identifying Threshold Concepts that if they are not grasped inhibit studentsâ learning before developing a set of Adaptive on-line Tutorials to target them. These Adaptive Tutorials were used by students throughout the first half of 2011, and were found to be both engaging and conducive to learning. In this paper, we present our approach and findings and discuss our strategy of giving educators pedagogical control over such advanced technologically-based instructional methods with the goal of increasing adoption and ultimately improving students learning.

The University of Wollongong and partner institutions UTAS, UTS, and QUT have engaged in an ALTC funded project to address issues of intercultural competence in engineering. As a major component of this project, observational research techniques are being employed to assess the current state of intercultural competence in first and second year engineering students. The research described in this paper is a process employed by the authors to observe cultural interactions between students in first or second year design subjects. The process involves simple video recordings of the groupsâ interactions over the course of a normal project team meeting, which are then coded and analysed using NVivo 8. To identify cultural diversity within the observed groups and perceived intercultural competency, the observation session is followed by a brief survey which incorporates dimensions of self and peer evaluation. This research will be conducted at all four participating institutions over the teaching semesters of 2011. As well as establishing an overview of the current state of intercultural intelligence amongst engineering cohorts, these research outcomes will be used to develop packaged teaching modules for developing intercultural intelligence amongst both engineering students and teaching staff.

In large engineering subjects, it is common to have multiple tutors where each tutor is responsible for grading the assessment tasks for students in their tutorial. An issue regularly faced by subject coordinators is how to achieve a consistent standard of marking and feedback quality amongst different tutors. To address this issue the authors initially used a number of methods including double blind marking to support consistent grading. However, with increasing demands on academics these time-consuming activities became an unrealistic option. This process was improved by using a software tool to compare both the marking and feedback provided by different tutors for a number of randomly selected project tasks. In this paper, we report using new software features developed as a result of this previous research to quickly establish and build a community of assessment practice amongst subject tutors. The reported process promotes inclusiveness by using a software tool to anonymously record and report tutor assessments allowing all opinions to be considered during a subsequent discussion activity. Even though this pilot exercise was undertaken by experienced tutors it significantly influenced their feedback skills and to a lesser extent their marking standards.

Engineers today are required to make critical judgements involving decisions that often extend beyond traditional discipline boundaries. This requires professional engineers to undertake ongoing learning. Much of this learning is informal, learnt on the job from peers from different disciplines. To enable students to develop the skills required for professional practice they need opportunities to experience, practise, reflect and improve their ability to work in a collaborative environment. One method used at the University of Technology, Sydney to develop these skills is collaborative activities incorporating immediate feedback. Subject topics are tested through quizzes that are initially undertaken individually and then collaboratively using immediate feedback assessment technique (IF-AT) cards. These activities allow students to first identify and subsequently have gaps in their learning addressed initially by their peers within the one activity. This paper reports on a comparative evaluation of the collaborative use of IF-AT quizzes in four subjects taught by the authors. We found that these methods not only consistently improved student engagement, learning and developed skills required for life-long learning, but also promoted changes in their learning culture by having them take more responsibility for their own learning.

Engineers today are often required to make critical judgements involving decisions that extend beyond traditional discipline boundaries requiring ongoing learning, much of which is informal, learnt on the job from peers who are often from different disciplines. To prepare students for professional practice, they need opportunities to experience, practise, reflect and improve their ability to work in a collaborative environment. The University of Technology, Sydney teaches an undergraduate engineering science programme in Hong Kong. The authors have found it initially difficult to get students to participate in collaborative learning activities and in particular those that involved students in using their own judgement or critical analysis. In response, the authors redesigned their course to integrate collaborative peer learning activities into all areas of the curriculum including collaborative problem solving exercises that are subsequently assessed through a series of first individual then collaborative quizzes (using the immediate feedback assessment techniques (IF-AT)) and exams. Initial results from students overwhelmingly showed that the collaborative activities improved their understanding, ability to think through and resolve problems, and the identification and addressing of gaps in their learning. This approach has potential to benefit all engineering students as it prepares students to make the most of the informal collaborative learning opportunities provided in professional practice while simultaneously enhancing their ability to undertake lifelong learning.

Junior structural engineers rarely work alone. Their design calculations are usually peer reviewed, and they may be involved in reviewing other engineersâ designs. They are also likely to have to articulate their design decisions to their supervisor or the project team, if not the client. At the University of Technology, Sydney the authors redesigned the asssessment tasks in the subject Concrete Design to be collaborative learning-oriented tasks that provide an opportunity for students to develop and practice the skills they will need to interact with other professionals in the workplace and continue learning during their career. We theorised that allowing students to collaborate during quizzes and a project would make these activities more learning-oriented, in that students would actively learn from each other while completing their assessment. Data from various sources were collected to examine the impact of this collaborative assessment on student learning. These sources included instructor observation, analysis of student responses to a reflection activity, student surveys and student results. Students reported that not only were these activities enjoyable but they also significantly improved their learning.

For several years the authors have coordinated a large engineering design subject, having a typical cohort of more than 300 students per semester. Lectures are supported by tutorials of approximately 32 students that incorporate a combination of collaborative team and project-based learning activities. Each tutor is responsible for grading the assessment tasks for students in their tutorial. A common issue is how to achieve a consistent standard of marking and student feedback between different tutors. To address this issue the authors have used a number of methods including double-blind marking and/or random re-marking to support consistent grading. However, even when only small variations between the overall grading of different tutors were found, students still complained about a perceived lack of consistency. In this paper we report on an investigation into the use of a collaborative peer learning process among tutors to improve mark standardisation, and marker consistency, and to build tutorsâ expertise and capacity in the provision of quality feedback. We found that studentsâ perceptions of differences in grading were exacerbated by inconsistencies in the language tutors use when providing feedback, and by differences in tutorsâ perceptions of how well individual criterion were met.

If universities are to prepare students for professional practise then they should also prepare them for the type of learning that occurs in the workplace. Graduatesâ workplace learning often differs considerably from their university experience. Firstly there is typically no lecturer or tutor to instruct them, and workplace learning is often collaborative. Hence studentsâ preparation for entering this workplace environment should include opportunities to practise collaborative learning with their peers. While designing collaborative learning tasks that involve students having to make and reflect on their judgements are extremely beneficial, these participatory exercises can result in an intolerable administrative burden especially for large classes. The authors have recently developed a specific benchmarking tool to assist academics to produce regular student centred assessments to improve studentsâ judgement and learning with a manageable academic effort. In this paper we reflectively deconstruct a purposely designed collaborative learning activity, investigating the effect of each of its components on student learning. Furthermore we explore how effectively the educational technology used reduced both the marking and administrative burden of running these exercises particularly in large classes.

A combination of self and peer assessment is a powerful and rich teaching and learning management tool that can be used to monitor and evaluate group performance in project work. An on-line system (SPARKPLUS â Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit) has been developed to simplify this process for the academic. This system generates factors for both the peer assessment weighting to be applied for individual contribution and the studentâs perception of their contribution compared to their peers by using key assessment criteria and a rigorous algorithm that is applied to the student evaluations of themselves and their peers. This paper describes and evaluates the introduction of SPARKPLUS to assess the performance of Mining Engineering Undergraduates in Year 3 at The University of Queensland in the first semester of 2008 in two of their core undergraduate courses that required group project work to be completed for assessment. The results obtained from this initial trial show the potential for improving student behaviour in group work through a structured approach to monitoring and feedback of their performance. It was found that male students with GPAs ⤠5 tend to overestimate their contribution to group work more frequently than their peers whereas the opposite applies for male students with GPAs > 5.

A number of digital animation clips have been developed to explore the effectiveness of their use in teaching of the subject Structural Analysis at the University of Technology, Sydney.The subject Structural Analysis is perceived by most students as challenging not only because of the theory and analysis concepts covered, but also because in its application it is difficult to visualise how structures behave when subjected to loads. The animation clips that were developed bring âmovement and lifeâ to structures that are traditionally presented in textbooks as static. It is anticipated that this will assist students to visualise the behaviour of structures and to better understand difficult concepts and methods taught in the subject. The intended uses of the animations are (1) in-class demonstration of behaviour of structures and methods of structural analysis and (2) as a self learning tool for students. This paper will present examples of the animations, how they have been used in teaching of Structural Analysis and feedback from students on their effectiveness.

The authors have previously reported the effectiveness of using self and peer assessment to improve learning outcomes in groupwork by providing opportunities to practise, assess and provide feedback on studentsâ attribute development. Combining this research and that reported in the literature regarding learning-oriented assessment we theorised that self and peer assessment would be an ideal tool to develop and efficiently facilitate activities specifically designed to be student centred and promote learning. In this paper we report the effectiveness of a self and peer assessment activity specifically designed to promote collaborative peer learning, require students to take responsibility for their learning and improve their judgement, while at the same time only imposing a small assessment load on academics.

The authors have previously reported the effectiveness of using self and peer assessment to improve learning outcomes in groupwork by providing opportunities to practise, assess and provide feedback on studentsâ attribute development. Combining this research and that reported in the literature on learning-oriented assessment we theorised that self and peer assessment would be an ideal tool to develop and facilitate assessments specifically designed to promote learning. In this paper we report testing this theory by integrating self and peer assessment into different learning oriented assessment tasks within a single subject. These tasks use self and peer assessment to not only assess a studentâs contribution to a team project but also assess individual student assignments, their understanding and judgement. The results demonstrate that self and peer assessment is an extremely effective tool in facilitating learning orientated assessments.

The authors have previously reported the effectiveness of using self and peer assessment to improve learning outcomes. Its thoughtful use provides opportunities to practise, assess and provide feedback on students graduate attribute development. Our previous research has shown that it is beneficial for teams to use self and peer assessment multiple times a semester to produce regular feedback allowing students to reflect on their performance, then put into practice what they have learned to improve their future performance and overall grade. In this paper we report our investigation as to whether the use of self and peer assessment produces similar benefits in a short-course where teams rather than staying the same, change for different assessment tasks.

There is a reported competency gap between the teamwork skills required by employers and those developed by engineering students during their undergraduate courses. The University of Technology, Sydney is addressing this issue by combining project-based learning with self and peer assessment to determine an individualâs team performance. A confidential online tool is used to collect and collate the student self and peer assessment ratings used both for formative feedback as well as assessment purposes. We found this approach improved student teamwork, engagement and satisfaction, while requiring only a small commitment of academic resources. We propose that using self and peer assessment would also be beneficial in industry to change workplace cultures, promote teamwork, individual skill development, engagement and productivity. Our implementation produces two assessment factors. The performance factor may be used by managers to coach staff to improve their performance, while the formative feedback factor will assist individuals to identify their strengths and weaknesses as perceived by their peers, facilitating ongoing skill development.

Since 2001 The International Institute of Women in Engineering (IIWE)at EPF, a Grande Ecole in France, has conducted a short course aimed at both female and male final year undergraduate or recently graduated engineers. The objectives of the course are to introduce students to the broad concepts and global issues they will encounter in their career and to initiate cultural awareness and communication skills required for the ever changing workplace. To demonstrate the success of this initiative, candidates were required to complete the same questionnaire prior to the commencement and at the conclusion of the course. This paper reports on some of the strategies used to engage international students in the course activities, and discusses the results of the 2006 before and after- course surveys.