ABSTRACT
The sharp increase in student cohort sizes, resulting from the removal of student number restrictions, coupled with the introduction of higher tuition fees, not only has increased student expectations but has set the challenge of delivering quality education at scale and at costs that are not prohibiting for the delivering institutions. These factors have necessitated the development of innovative teaching strategies for ensuring that resources are targeted at providing the most effective methods of education. Due to its expense and complexity, reduction of practical teaching is a convenient way to reduce costs and increase efficiency – that, of course, would be quite detrimental to the breadth of the learning available to students.
A multidisciplinary approach is presented that provides an alternative to reducing practical teaching due to cost constraints, while increasing the potential to leverage greater learning with further pedagogic benefits achieved as a result of a single department having an overarching responsibility for the delivery of practical activities.
What is described is generally efficient, but it is not cheap in terms of either money or effort. The driver is to try to enhance the student experience and to ensure that engineers graduate with a good skill set in terms of experimental capabilities and an understanding of experimental limitations and experimental design and safe and professional behaviour in practical work.
The meaning of Liberal Engineering, and what such an undergraduate programme might comprise is considered, with the single most important aspect of what is meant by Liberal being the inter-relationship between engineering and the whole of society. Clearly, although such a goal would be very important for a graduating engineer, it is equally difficult to deliver to diverse undergraduate cohorts with different backgrounds and different aspirations.
In the UK a team of visionaries at NMiTE (the New Model in Technology and Engineering) is developing university-level programmes with several unusual features. These are likely to include: almost no lectures – focusing instead on student-centred learning by problem- and project-based techniques; student involvement, alongside industrial employers, with the development of the curriculum; 30% of non-engineering content; no terms, just three-week blocks of learning time; gender-equal admissions and staffing; unconventional admissions requirements, with energy, commitment, and experience trumping A-levels; close links with employers in work placements, mentoring, and curriculum development; academic staff with expertise beyond engineering – in art, design, human factors, ethics, and so on; and encouragement to fail creatively and positively. The details of devising and delivering such a course and the issues raised are discussed and proposals are made for future directions to be followed.
Professional engineers operate in an increasingly sophisticated, global world, often working on international projects, in international locations; they must be agile team players, adept communicators, reflective, and able to operate effectively within interdisciplinary and multi-cultural working environments. Engineering is a vocational subject and most engineering undergraduates intend to pursue an industry career. Recognizing that student engineers worked largely within the traditional silos of their discipline areas, a strategic aim was identified to enable cross-disciplinary working. A working party comprising academics from different departmental areas in the faculty of Engineering was brought together to deliver two cross-faculty project weeks: the Global Engineering Challenge (GEC) for all first year students and Engineering You’re Hired (EYH), for all second year students. The challenges in facilitating these interdisciplinary team-working events are outlined and proposed changes to deal with them are put forward.
Finally, the usage of active learning techniques that can lead to substantial improvements in student performance is looked as a comparative study between the UK and the USA.
To improve utilization, a three-hour workshop was developed and delivered to over 200 academic staff at seven different UK universities. The first half of the workshop focused on how to design modules (courses) that improve student engagement through active learning. The second half of the workshop was used to introduce academic staff to many of the common engagement techniques that are used to replace lecture during instruction. Pre- and post-workshop quizzes were used to assess the effectiveness of the workshop. The key concepts from the workshop and the assessment results of the workshop’s effectiveness are presented and summarized.
