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The professional formation of new graduates and their ability to perform well at the start of their career depends on the development of both technical skills and professional competencies. Whilst the latter aspects have become increasingly considered within engineering programs, they are often learnt within an academic context rather than a practice context. This is in contrast with research that argues that professional expertise should be learnt within the context in which it will be applied. This paper reports on an analysis of engineering student reflections on professional engagement activities over the duration of their university study. A text-based thematic analysis examines the link between different types of activities and professional competencies (using Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competencies), and the level of sophistication in the language using Blooms taxonomy. The thematic analysis provides strong evidence that different activity types result in students being more likely to reflect upon specific competencies. The deeper Bloom analysis showed that generally the activity types that have reflections skewed towards higher Bloom levels are those that involve project activities. We conclude that those activities that require student-driven exploration are the most likely to engage students in thinking about the nature of real-world engineering practice.

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with written communication, despite years of interventions to improve student writing. Much has been written about the importance of getting engineering students to write, but there has been a little investigation of engineering academics' perceptions of writing practices in the curriculum, and the extent to which these practices are visible to their students and to the academics. This paper draws on research from an ongoing study into the invisibility of writing practices in the engineering curriculum using a practice architectures lens. The paper uses examples from the sites of practice of two participants in the study to argue that prevailing practices in engineering education constrain more than enable the development and practice of writing in the engineering curriculum.

Peer review has been the focus of an ongoing study at a series of recent annual conferences of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE). A further development of this study has been to explore the perspective/s of the authors of these conference papers and the impact that peer review can have on their development as researchers. This paper uses the identity-trajectory framework to illustrate relationships between peer review and academic identity construction for engineering education authors in the AAEE community. Participants' responses illustrate how various aspects of responding to reviews and writing reviews for other authors, contribute to the development of the networking and intellectual strands of their academic identity as engineering education researchers. We suggest that members of the global engineering education community should be mindful of how they write their peer reviews of conference papers to ensure the opportunity to constructively contribute to their peers' successful transition into this different research paradigm is not missed.

The field of research (FoR) that an academic participates in is both a manifestation of, and a contributor to the development of their identity. When an academic changes that FoR the question then arises as to how they reconcile this change with their identity. This paper uses the identity-trajectory framework to analyse the discourse of 19 engineering academics in relation to their educational research. The findings reveal insights into the identity changes experienced in the transition from typical engineering academic to engineering education researcher. Participants' responses illustrate how various aspects of their research activities contribute to the development of the networking and intellectual strands of their academic identity as engineering education researchers, and the effect of their university environment on this development. Conference participation was found to be an important contributor to progression of the intellectual and networking strands of identity-trajectory for researchers at all stages of development, although for different reasons.

With the increasing challenges facing professional engineers working in more complex, global and interdisciplinary contexts, different approaches to understanding how engineers practice and learn are necessary. This paper draws on recent research in the social sciences from the field of workplace learning, to suggest that a practice-theory perspective on engineers' professional learning is fruitful. It shifts the focus from the attributes of the individual learner (knowledge, skills and attitudes) to the attributes of the practice (interactions, materiality, opportunities and challenges). Learning is thus more than the technical "acquisition" and "transfer" of knowledge, but a complex bundle of activities, that is, social, material, embodied and emerging. The paper is illustrated with examples from a research study of the learning of experienced engineers in the construction industry to demonstrate common practices--site walks and design review meetings--in which learning takes place.

The ability to communicate--orally and in writing--is a graduate attribute that employers in many countries rank as number one in importance, aside from relevant qualifications. This paper reports the implementation and evaluation of a collaborative peer assessment and self-assessment learning and teaching (L&T) initiative, which was designed to improve postgraduate students' judgment of writing standards and to improve their own writing--according to that standard. The initiative was embedded in an introductory financial accounting unit in an Australian university. In a mixed methods study, the matched pair design revealed improvements in the written communication skills of students as determined by an independent assessor. There was also statistically significant improvement in the ability of students to apply assessment standards to grammatical, structural and presentation components of written communication. Whereas it was not possible to attribute the improvements entirely to the collaborative peer assessment initiative, our observations and students' self-reporting comments suggest that the L&T initiative was effective.

The authors have previously reported the effectiveness of using self and peer assessment to improve learning outcomes by providing opportunities to practise, assess and provide feedback on students' attribute development. Despite this work and the research of others, a significant number of students and, indeed, many academics focus on the free-rider deterrent capability of self and peer assessment, rather than its capacity to provide opportunities for developing judgement and facilitating reflection and feedback to complete the learning cycle. The advent of web-based tools such as SPARK[superscript PLUS] allows the frequent and efficient implementation of self and peer assessment activities even in large classes. This article reports the results of an investigation into whether the regular use of self and peer assessment in different contexts promoted effective peer learning, increased engagement and encouraged students to learn. (Contains 7 figures.)

Purpose: As a way of focusing curriculum development and learning outcomes universities have introduced graduate attributes, which their students should develop during their degree course. Some of these attributes are discipline-specific, others are generic to all professions. The development of these attributes can be promoted by the careful use of self- and peer assessment. The authors have previously reported using the self- and peer assessment software tool SPARK in various contexts to facilitate opportunities to practice, develop, assess and provide feedback on these attributes. This research and that of the other developers identified the need to extend the features of SPARK, to increase its flexibility and capacity to provide feedback. This paper seeks to report the results of the initial trials to investigate the potential of these new features to improve learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews some of the key literature with regard to self- and peer assessment, discusses the main aspects of the original online self- and peer assessment tool SPARK and the new version SPARK[superscript PLUS], reports and analyses the results of a series of student surveys to investigate whether the new features and applications of the tool have improved the learning outcomes in a large multi-disciplinary Engineering Design subject. Findings: It was found that using self- and peer assessment in conjunction with collaborative peer learning activities increased the benefits to students and improved engagement. Furthermore it was found that the new features available in SPARK[superscript PLUS] facilitated efficient implementation of additional self- and peer assessment processes (assessment of individual work and benchmarking exercises) and improved learning outcomes. The trials demonstrated that the tool assisted in improving students' engagement with and learning from peer learning exercises, the collection and distribution of feedback and helping them to identify their individual strengths and weaknesses. Practical implications: SPARK[superscript PLUS] facilitates the efficient management of self- and peer assessment processes even in large classes, allowing assessments to be run multiple times a semester without an excessive burden for the coordinating academic. While SPARK[superscript PLUS] has enormous potential to provide significant benefits to both students and academics, it is necessary to caution that, although a powerful tool, its successful use requires thoughtful and reflective application combined with good assessment design. Originality/value: It was found that the new features available in SPARK[superscript PLUS] efficiently facilitated the development of new self- and peer assessment processes (assessment of individual work and benchmarking exercises) and improved learning outcomes. (Contains 10 figures and 1 table.)

Purpose: Self- and peer assessment has proved effective in promoting the development of teamwork and other professional skills in undergraduate students. However, in previous research approximately 30 percent of students reported that its use produced no perceived improvement in their teamwork experience. It was hypothesised that a significant number of these students were probably members of a team that would have functioned well without self- and peer assessment and hence the process did not improve their teamwork experience. This paper aims to report the testing of this hypothesis. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews some of the literature on self- and peer assessment, outlines the online self- and peer assessment tool SPARKPLUS, and analyses the results of a post-subject survey of students in a large multi-disciplinary engineering design subject. Findings: It was found that students who were neutral as to whether self- and peer assessment improved their teamwork experience cannot be assumed to be members of well-functioning teams. Originality/value: To increase the benefits for all students it is recommended that self- and peer assessment focuses on collaborative peer learning, not just assessment of team contributions. Furthermore, it is recommended that feedback sessions be focused on learning not just assessment outcomes and graduate attribute development should be recorded and tracked by linking development to categories required for professional accreditation. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

The professional formation of new graduates and their ability to perform well at the start of their career depends on the development of both technical skills and professional competencies. Whilst the latter aspects have become increasingly considered within engineering programs, they are often learnt within an academic context rather than a practice context. This is in contrast with research that argues that professional expertise should be learnt within the context in which it will be applied. This paper reports on an analysis of engineering student reflections on professional engagement activities over the duration of their university study. A text-based thematic analysis examines the link between different types of activities and professional competencies (using Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competencies), and the level of sophistication in the language using Blooms taxonomy. The thematic analysis provides strong evidence that different activity types result in students being more likely to reflect upon specific competencies. The deeper Bloom analysis showed that generally the activity types that have reflections skewed towards higher Bloom levels are those that involve project activities. We conclude that those activities that require student-driven exploration are the most likely to engage students in thinking about the nature of real-world engineering practice.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]