Engineering Education Commons^™

Soft Skills Of Engineering Students, Nael Barakat, Aziz Shekh-Abed

Research Papers

Soft skills are a combination of personal qualities and interpersonal abilities that enable individuals to work effectively with others, communicate clearly, and collectively solve problems. Soft skills are required for effective problem-solving and decision-making. Soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, and empathy, are essential for developing a collaborative culture that encourages high order thinking and building relationships. By developing these soft skills, engineering students can improve their chances of success both in their academic pursuits and in their future careers. The goal of the study was to evaluate soft skills among engineering students, to provide insight to educators that can …

‘There’S A Machine On The Team’: Employers’ Perspectives On Graduate Employability In Digitised Workplaces, Chris. Winberg, Simon Winberg

Research Papers

The implementation of interconnected digital and cyber-physical technologies across engineering fields is changing the nature of professional work. These new forms of work present both technical and social challenges; it is therefore timely to consider the implications of the digital transformation of work for engineering education. In this study the focus is on the technical and social skills that employers have identified as desirable for productive work practices in digital/cyber-physical environments. The research question guiding the study is: What technical and social skills do employers in digitised/cyber-physical workplaces value in engineering graduates? The study drew on Legitimation Code Theory’s Specialization …

Descriptions Of Peer Mentors As Told By Undergraduate Engineering Student Mentees, Darcie Christensen, Idalis Villanueva Alarcón

Research Papers

Peer mentorship is a relationship between two people who are at a similar level. In this study, the setting is academic, namely peer mentorship amongst undergraduate engineering students. Within peer mentorship, participants aim to help one another through various activities, such as sharing information, helping motivate, providing advice, lending support, etc. The outcomes of peer mentorship are generally positive and mutually beneficial for mentors and mentees, but the focus of peer mentoring research in undergraduate engineering has primarily been focused on implementing and evaluating formalized peer mentoring efforts, not necessarily on the needs of students who may be in these …

Going Beyond Intentions: A Methodology For Assessing Entrepreneurial Activity Among Engineering Education Alumni, Saul Garcia Huertes, Ramon Bragós Bardia

Research Papers

This research paper proposes a novel methodology for evaluating entrepreneurial activity among engineering education alumni using their public CVs as our main source of information. The objective is to go beyond measuring entrepreneurship intentions or mindset through surveys, and instead analyse actual career data to assess the impact of entrepreneurship education. The study utilises shared user data and employs GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) models to infer entrepreneurial activity that extends beyond job titles, delving into the specific responsibilities and achievements associated with each position.

A Framework For Investigating The Application Of Educational Theories In Engineering Education Research, Vivian Van Der Werf, Gitte Van Helden, Johannes Schleiss, Gillian N. Saunders-Smits

Research Papers

Grounding the design of educational interventions and their analysis in theory allows us to understand and interpret results of interventions and advance educational theories. Moreover, building an understanding of which educational theories are used and how they are used can build a consensus among researchers and mature the research in a field. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which educational theories are used to ground the design, analysis, and evaluation of learning activities in engineering education. For this purpose, we developed a coding instrument to determine: (1) which educational theories are expressed in studies investigating learning activities and …

Ai For Leadership: Implementation And Evaluation Of An Ai Education Program, Aikaterini Bagiati, Andrés F. Salazar-Gómez, Annalyn Bachmann, Kathleen D. Kennedy, Cynthia Breazeal

Research Papers

AI education is rapidly becoming the next frontier when it comes to solving the world's grand challenges; however, ways to introduce AI to large complex organisations are still vastly understudied. To address this gap in 2021, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) entered into a collaboration with the US Air Force (USAF). The goal of this relationship is to develop, study, and evaluate different learning modalities and online/in-person experiences to introduce AI to the diverse USAF workforce. The USAF is a very complex organisation and its employees vary in terms of educational and cultural backgrounds, as well as in their work-related …

Nurturing Community: Using Community-Based Service Learning In Biopharmaceutical Engineering Education., Miriam I Jiménez-Pérez, Yocanxóchitl Perfecto-Avalos., Mariana C Orellana- Haro

Research Papers

This project evaluates the use of CBSL as a strategy for teaching clinical investigation in the development of biopharmaceutical products based on the nutritional needs of children of a low-income community. To achieve this purpose, our students formulated various functional foods that provided the necessary nutrients for the children in the target community. Afterwards, they drafted the corresponding clinical protocols for each formulation, considering possible ethical implications. The academic evaluation was based on the comparison of courses with and without CBSL. The study found that students showed a slight improvement in academic performance with CBSL. This suggests that CBSL can …

Teachers’ Reflections On Their Experiences Teaching Interdisciplinary Project-Based Courses, Malin Kjellberg, Michael O'Connell, Becky Bergman, Christian Stöhr, Johanna Larsson

Research Papers

In project-based, interdisciplinary engineering courses, teachers face the challenge of not only imparting technical knowledge but also facilitating effective project- and teamwork. In this study we conducted a thematic qualitative analysis of 11 teachers' reflections on interdisciplinary project-based learning (PjBL). The results show that teachers appreciated PjBL as a means to motivate students and that one challenge was handling differences in terms of student disciplinary background. While most teachers did not see a need for further training, teachers who did identify such needs also seemed to already apply a wider range of PjBL teaching strategies. We discuss the implication of …

How To Develop Teachers' Well-Being?, Beatrix Séllei, Emma Lógó

Research Papers

The well-being of teachers is one key to students’ and education’s success. As an innovative solution, we hold a training program for educators using design thinking based on the “Designing Your Life” program that can be familiar with engineering educators’ mindsets. We adopted it for the Hungarian circumstances and made one pilot program and one real program with the self-applying teachers at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. We surveyed teachers’ well-being with the PERMA Profiler at the beginning of the program and one month after the program in both samples and had in total of 41 answers (n=23). …

Engineering Students’ Dynamic And Fluid Group Practices In A Collaborative Design Project, Jonte Bernhard, Jacob Gorm Davidsen, Thomas Ryberg

Research Papers

There is a growing interest in engineering education that the curriculum should include collaborative design projects. Collaboration and collaborative learning imply a shared activity, a shared purpose, a joint problem-solving space, and mutual interdependence to achieve intended learning outcomes. The focus, in this study, is 1 Corresponding Author J Bernhard jonte.bernhard@liu.se on engineering students’ collaborative group practices. The context is a design project in the fifth semester of the problem-based Architecture and Design programme at Aalborg University. Students’ collaborative work in the preparation for an upcoming status seminar was video recorded in situ. In our earlier studies video ethnography, conversation …

Sense Of Belonging Among Technology Students In Finland, Susanna Bairoh, Johanna Naukkarinen

Research Papers

This paper examines Finnish technology students’ belonging in technology. The phenomenon is studied at the level of the field (belonging in the field of technology) and at the level of institution (belonging in one’s study community). The data were collected within the annual student survey conducted by a professional organization for academic engineers in 2022, and analysed statistically. Results suggest that men strongly experience they belong in technology while women express some doubts, and non-binary respondents are even less certain of their belonging. Gender differences in belonging in the field of technology are more prominent than those of belonging in …

Searching For Young Talent: Understanding Industrial Recruitment Practices For Hiring Engineering Degree Apprenticeship Students, Klara Kövesi, Christiane Gillet, Nathalie Krien

Research Papers

This study aims to investigate industrial companies’ recruitment practices and standards for hiring their engineering degree apprentices. We examine (1) how they find their future engineering degree apprentices, (2) their recruitment standards and (3) to what extent organisational characteristics shape their recruitment decisions. To answer these questions we have carried out an online quantitative study, comprising exclusively closed questions, with the participation of workplace mentors of engineering apprenticeship students (n=70). Subsequently, we have conducted a descriptive statistical data analyse on SPSS. Our results indicate that industrial companies find their engineering apprentices by means of students’ speculative applications or via engineering …

Academic Procrastination In Engineering Students, Pascal Wilhelm, Jarick Nijman

Research Papers

Procrastination is a common phenomenon in students in higher education. To voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay can affect academic performance, cause study delay, but also lead to frustration and stress. This study set out to explore students’ beliefs about what causes procrastination, the extent to which online education and the use of digital devices affects their level of procrastination, and their coping mechanisms and ideas about the kind of support a study program can offer to mitigate the effects of procrastination. Focus group interviews were conducted with first-, second- …

To Withdraw, Investigate, Negotiate Or Integrate? Students' Coping Strategies With Disorienting Dilemmas In Interdisciplinary Project Courses, Xiaoqi Feng, Julia Sundman, Hanna Aarnio, Maija Taka, Marko Keskinen, Olli Varis

Research Papers

In today’s rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected world, engineering educators are required to implement active pedagogical approaches to support students’ interdisciplinary problem-solving processes. However, interdisciplinary and experiential learning may evoke situations where students question their past learnings and even existing values, beliefs, or assumptions. Our study examined the emergence of “disorienting dilemmas”, a central concept to transformative learning theory, and students’ experiences in coping with them in engineering education. We interviewed ten students from two interdisciplinary project courses at School of Engineering in Aalto University, Finland, and conducted thematic analysis to identify the types of disorienting dilemmas and the coping …

Varieties Of Project-Task Design In Interdisciplinary Engineering Education, Miles Macleod, Coralie Johnson, Jan Van Der Veen

Research Papers

Experience in interdisciplinary problem-solving is considered crucial if engineers are to be equipped to handle modern complex environmental and sustainability challenges. Such challenges cross disciplinary boundaries. Project-based learning is currently a central paradigm for providing that experience. Teams from different disciplines are formed to work together on a specific scientific or engineering projecttask (often a real-world inspired problem). Furthermore according to the paradigm projects should be open-structured to allow students to experience interdisciplinary problem-solving as it might occur in the real world. In this study we explore preliminary results of data collected on 5 project-based modules at a Dutch technical …

Can Students’ Self-Efficacy Beliefs Explain Academic Motivation And Career Intentions?, Anna-Kathrin Wimmer

Research Papers

In our technologized and increasingly complex world, jobs in STEM make a crucial contribution to innovation and sustainability. However, there are still many vacancies in this field. To tackle the shortage of professionals, it is even more important to successfully prepare qualified young people for engineering careers and foster competences that promote innovative and creative solutions. In addition to cognitive abilities, research has shown how self-efficacy, which describes confidence in one's own abilities to successfully overcome obstacles, can influence students’ motivation, interest and therefore academic and vocational training success. Studies show that people with a strong belief in their own …

Meaning Making Of The Mathematics In Engineering: The Case Of Linear Models In Statistical Signal Processing, Solomon Abedom Tesfamicael

Research Papers

Meaning making of the mathematics involved in engineering problems can boost students’ learning, in general. Zooming in to a particular engineering course in signal processing, called Estimation, Detection, and Classification, given to 3rd-year students at NTNU, the potential for meaning making has been investigated using a mix of directed and summative content analysis methods for the specific content Linear models. The findings show that an attempt is made to present the linear model-based estimators in reduced complexity, i.e., without detailed, rigorous proofs that demand solid prior knowledge and concept image from the learner. The 18-page chapter is dominated by advanced …

Teamwork Skills Development In Engineering Education: A Holistic Approach, Callum Kimpton, Nicoleta Maynard

Research Papers

Engineering is a profession grounded in teamwork with the need for engineering students and professionals to possess the ability to integrate their work efforts seamlessly and effectively towards a common goal. This in turn necessitates the need for a comprehensive, tailored, and relevant overarching conceptual framework to be constructed to ensure that our subsequent generations of engineers are equipped to efficiently tackle existential societal problems including anthropogenic climate change and the multi-faceted nature of sustainable development. This paper motivates, details, and presents a conceptual framework for implementing successful engineering teams in tertiary engineering projects. The emergent conceptual framework presented is …

Employment Pathways For Emerging Talent: Evaluating The Certificate In Computer And Data Science (Cds), Andres Felipe Salazar Gomez, Aikaterini Bagiati, Gillian Walsh, Lana Cook, Admir Masic

Research Papers

This research paper presents the results of the first evaluation of the learning experience, challenges and opportunities of the Certificate in Computer and Data Science (CDS). Specifically, it evaluates two different real-life experiential learning opportunities (ELOs): supervised internships and self-guided projects.

MIT Emerging Talent, an initiative that expands upon the efforts of the MIT ReACT (Refugee Action Hub), provides talented learners a platform to advance their skills, leverage their expertise, access a professional career, and become leading change agents in their communities. The CDS is a 12 month-long online learning program that opens education to employment pathways for emerging talent, …

Between Flexibility And Relativism: How Students Deal With Uncertainty In Sustainability Challenges, Nina Lotte Bohm, Renate Klaassen, Ellen Van Bueren, Perry Den Brok

Research Papers

Universities open their doors to society, inviting the complexity of the world to enter engineering education through challenge-based courses. While working on complex issues, engineering students learn to deal with different kinds of uncertainty: uncertainty about the dynamics of a real-world challenge, the knowledge gaps in the problem, or the conflicting perspectives amongst the people involved. Although we know from previous research that students are likely to encounter these uncertainties in sustainability challenges, which metacognitive strategies they use to deal with them is unclear. We interviewed nine MSc students at the end of a challenge-based course at a Dutch university …

Teaching Sustainability Through A Role-Play Case Study Of E-Scooter Use On College Campuses, Shruti Mehta, Ashish Hingle, Aditya Johri

Research Papers

Sustainability has developed into a pressing concern across disciplinary domains, and the need for teaching sustainability concepts to students has grown significantly. In this paper, we present a research study that assessed undergraduate students’ understanding of sustainability after participating in a case study discussion. We designed and implemented a role-play case study of e-scooters on a college campus. The case facilitated “near transfer,” as it focused on an issue most students have personally experienced. Furthermore, the role-play component simulated a real-world context and allowed students to take different perspectives related to the topic, resulting in a discussion of social, political, …

From Curriculum To Career: Analysing The Contribution Of Delft University’S Robotics Msc Programme To The Career Path Of Its Alumni, Gillian Saunders-Smits, Linette Bossen, Joost De Winter

Research Papers

The increasing global demand for robotics expertise led the Delft University of Technology to launch a two-year Master of Science programme in Robotics in 2020. The programme was designed to educate versatile robotics engineers capable of overseeing the entire process from conception of robotics systems to implementation. The curriculum integrates disciplines such as machine perception, artificial intelligence, robot planning and control, human-robot interaction, and ethics, and emphasises personal development through a course called Portfolio, which was later rebranded as Vision and Reflection. The effectiveness of the programme was evaluated by conducting a survey among the first cohort of students. The …

Conversations: Teaching Sustainability In Engineering, Alicia Gonzalez Buelga, Dorottya Cserzo, Irina Lazar

Research Papers

Our research focuses on embedding sustainability in the engineering curriculum in ways that are efficient, coherent and inclusive. An important strand of work within this wider remit is finding suitable approaches for promoting collaboration between institutions and academics and advance the understanding of what ‘sustainability’ means in engineering education in the first place, by producing reliable data that can inform our future practice, leading to institutional change. In this paper, we report and discuss the organisation and the findings of a series of inter-institutional conversations that took place during two in person workshops, with the central theme of embedding sustainability …

Engineering Skills And Competences For A More Sustainable World, Dunja Olbina, Bogdan Buzatu, Ljilana Kheirawi, Maria Domaltova

Research Papers

In 2015, the member states of the United Nations agreed that the ideal vision of the world should be achieved by 2030. Halfway through the efforts to reach that vision, and considering the environmental issues we are surrounded by, the need for Higher Education to further incorporate sustainability topics into the curriculum is noticeable.

This paper presents the outcomes of the research through which we aim to make an impact on Higher Education institutions and the ways they are educating and raising awareness on sustainability-related topics. It presents an analysis of the data collected through a survey and focus groups, …

Towards Sustainability - Fostering Gender Dimensions For Inclusiveness In Science Technology Engineering And Production (Step) Fields, Ann Sharon Lourens, Nicole Truter

Research Papers

Statistics from the Engineering Council of South Africa indicate that a large number of women who enter the engineering sector leave their careers in the early stages because they felt isolated and experienced discrimination in this traditionally maledominated industry. Furthermore, research on global trends have highlighted the importance of an inclusive atmosphere as a result of the increase in the proportion of female decision-makers, racial and ethnic background differences, persons with disabilities and generation gaps with resulting different learning styles and needs. Literature also suggests that workforce diversity that maximises inclusion and minimises resistance, allows organisations to create change that …

Problematising And Framing Spatial Research In Engineering Education, Meryn Mcnea, Reena Cole, David Tanner, Diarmaid Lane

Research Papers

Spatial research has experienced a surge in popularity across the global community in recent years, with an undeniable rise in the favourability of spatial thinking approaches in academic and higher education settings. An engineer’s spatial ability is dependent on their capacity to engage a set of cognitive skills to visualise, reason and communicate spatial relations between objects and space. With the recent growth in popularity around spatial research, new spatial terms are frequently introduced resulting in a definitional overlap between terms and ideas. This may sometimes result in a lack of clarity regarding spatial terms and definitions, with the definitions …

The Need For Interdisciplinarity: A Case On Employees’ Perspectives, Dennis Friedrichsen, Maiken Winther, Anette Kolmos

Research Papers

The issue of interdisciplinarity contains disparate nodes of knowledge and practices, including a wealth of information concerning the potential and value of interdisciplinary work. In the context of companies that handle large-scale and complex tasks, interdisciplinarity takes on a real-life role since its presence and importance is readily observable and, as this paper shows, a conscious, deliberate, and highly valued aspect of innovation in companies. Academic literature on the issue of interdisciplinarity asserts that engineers in the future need a wealth of competences, including ability to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams. Aalborg University in Denmark has experimented with interdisciplinarity in various …

Curriculum Workshops As A Method Of Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development: A Case Study For Artificial Intelligence In Engineering, Johannes Schleiss, Anke Manukjan, Michelle Ines Bieber, Philipp Pohlenz, Sebastian Stober

Research Papers

The integration of tools and methods of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the engineering domain has become increasingly important, and with it comes a shift in required competencies. As a result, engineering education should now incorporate AI competencies into its courses and curricula. While interdisciplinary education at a subject level has already been explored, the development of interdisciplinary curricula often presents a challenge. This paper investigates the use of the curriculum workshop method for developing interdisciplinary, competence-oriented curricula. Using a case study of a newly developed interdisciplinary Bachelor program for AI in Engineering, the study evaluates the instrument of the curriculum …

Preparing Structural Engineering Graduates To Increase Their Positive Impact, Louise Lynch, James Norman

Research Papers

Traditionally the role of a structural engineer was to design structures that were safe for use by society and that enabled society to develop and evolve. However, with the climate emergency structural engineers need to be more conscious of the choices that are made on their projects that lead to overuse of material, and work to reduce the embodied carbon in their structures. This cannot be achieved in isolation, it’s a systemic issue, where decisions made throughout a project, from concept to construction, can impact the embodied carbon. The structural engineer needs to be mindful of these decisions to have …

Mapping The Engineering Education Research Landscape Across Europe, Natalie Wint, Andrew Valentine, Bill Williams, Mike Murphy

Research Papers

The growth of Engineering Education Research (EER) has led to claims about it becoming a globally connected field of inquiry. This paper presents data on the development of EER within seven European countries, with the aim of contributing towards understanding of the field. Data was collected from participants of a workshop held at the SEFI 2022 Annual Conference which was entitled “Mapping Engineering Education Research in Europe”. Participants were asked to comment on the presence of formal research groups and PhD Programmes, as well as incentives and funding opportunities within the context. In most countries, there was a reported absence …