New Engineers for a Changing World

New Engineers for a Changing World

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  New Engineers fora Changing World Professor Gary C Wood Academic Director, New Model Institute for Technology & Engineering [email protected] | @GC_Wood | www.garycwood.uk
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  Overview • My background/expertise •The need for a new approach to engineering education • Authentic learning and assessment • The importance of professional capabilities • NMITE’s approach: an example from a new provider • Driving change through innovation.
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  About me! • Professorof Learning and Development • SFHEA and National Teaching Fellow • A linguist by background – PhD in language development in children • Education and academic development – working particularly with engineers and internationally • Co-founder and Head of Sheffield Engineering Leadership Academy (2014-2021) • Now Academic Director of NMITE.
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  Interests • Enterprise education •Authentic learning and assessment for learning • Developing professional capabilities • Industry engagement in learning • Technology-enhanced learning • Innovation in learning and teaching.
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  The need fora new approach 1. Industry relevance • Traditional disciplines perceived as silos – relevant for academic research but less for modern industry requirements • Students struggle to ‘break into’ problems, as new graduates, to determine how to approach solving them (Wood & Gibbs 2019) • Modular structures mean learning problems are not truly open- ended • Learning experiences lack opportunities for integration • Graduates draw on only a fraction of what they learn in a traditional degree programme, and they know only a fraction of collective knowledge in their discipline.
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  The need fora new approach 2. Skills Gaps • IET Skills and Demand in Industry report 2019: • 59% of companies report graduates with academic knowledge but inadequate workplace skills • Graduates found to have gaps in professional capabilities • 49% of employers in the 2021 survey report a lack of teamworking skills • But also communication, literacy, numeracy/data handling, personal effectiveness etc. • See also: RAEng reports (2007, 2010, 2019); Graham (2012); Perkins (2013).
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  The need fora new approach 3. We need to widen access to engineering education • UK has a shortfall in the number of engineers (RAEng 2019) • Women represent only 23.5% of undergraduates on engineering programmes • There have been lots of initiatives by universities through WP activities, outreach, etc. – little impact against the scale of the problem • Key challenge perceived to be the lack of girls taking A- Levels in maths and physics (Engineering UK 2023).
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  The need fora new approach 4. Institutional factors and traditions • Traditional approaches to teaching persist • Teaching spaces are often shared so there are resource pressures • Timetabling is fixed and determines the teaching schedule, often into 50-minute blocks • Recruitment patterns – high student numbers combined with teaching schedules and resource pressures often lead to efficiency overtaking pedagogical value in learning design.
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  What does anew approach look like? Two key components: authentic learning and professional capabilities
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  Authentic learning &assessment • “Authentic learning is an [educational] approach that allows students to explore, discuss, and meaningfully construct concepts and relationships in contexts that involve real-world problems and projects that are relevant to the learner.” (Donovan, Bransford, & Pellegrino, 1999)
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  Authentic learning benefits •Industry relevance – real(istic) problems • Interdisciplinarity: • Less contrived problems prepare students for the challenge they’ll face in industry • Real(istic) problems don’t neatly fit in (academic) disciplinary boundaries • Learning often becomes less constrained by ILOs as targets (for students) • The purpose is producing a valuable solution/output, rather that achieving a grade – so motivation changes.
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  Authentic assessment • Authenticlearning creates opportunities for authentic assessment • Authentic assessment is often assessment for learning rather than of learning • Allows students to build their skills in producing professionally-relevant outputs (reports, simulations, models, prototypes, presentations, drawings, media pieces, meeting contributions, etc).
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  Professional capabilities • Technicalknowledge alone is not enough for graduates to succeed in the workplace • They need to be able to operate in a professional environment: • Communicating effectively with different audiences • Collaboration • Individual effectiveness and self-awareness (reflective practice, CPD) • Having high levels of information literacy • Being enterprising: turning ideas into action.
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  Professional capabilities • Aspine of development • Staged across FHEQ Levels 4-7 • 25% of the learning outcomes for an MEng programme in this example (University of Sheffield).
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  Professional capabilities • Theseskills are as important as technical competence • Traditionally, an assumption that professional skills are acquired on a learning by doing basis – but that’s painful for everyone! • Training is not just about the future – it equips our students with skills to be better students • Learning experiences need to develop skills – embedded within, and not alongside, the technical curriculum • Crucial that students not only have but can articulate and exemplify these skills, linked to their own career aspirations.
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  Portfolios for prof.capabilities • Skills are developed over time and become capabilities as students are able to deploy them across different contexts • Assessing professional capabilities in line with AHEP needs thought – because they are not developed in one place in a specific module • Portfolios are a good solution: • Individual modules become the space where development of the skills happens • Across modules, they become capabilities • The capabilities are then assessed through reflective portfolios that students build, drawing on example outputs from other modules • In later years, this can provide space for personalisation of learning, aligned with career aspirations.
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  “But there’s toomuch content?!” • Authentic learning and professional capability development are not necessarily in competition with technical content in programmes • It’s not about what is taught but how it is taught • But: we can reduce technical content, much of which is arbitrary anyway • We need to teach students to: • Think like an engineer (drawing on technical knowledge) • Behave like an engineer (applying knowledge and professional capabilities).
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  A Case Studyof NMITE’s new model
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  About NMITE • New,small, specialist provider in Hereford – previously had no Higher Education Institution • Engineering and technology focus supports the UK economy and aims to nurture ‘work-ready’ engineers • Founded to catalyse Herefordshire’s economic, educational and social ecosystem • First students started September 2021 (accelerated MEng Integrated Engineering).
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  NMITE’s Guiding Principles •Be a significant centre for innovative, mould-breaking engineering education • Explore the ways engineering is connected to other disciplines and society • Teaching and learning that is of long-term value in a rapidly changing society and profession • Deep integration of employers and communities in teaching and learning.
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  Why Integrated Engineering? •Current offer is degrees in Integrated Engineering (degrees in Sustainable Built Environment from September 2023) • Develop a rounded skillset from which to build an engineering career • Industry-linked with real challenge problems as a focus for learning • Be able to solve problems as they’re encountered as a professional engineer • In demand from industry.
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  Our approach tolearning • Learning in a studio environment • Collaborative space, capacity 25-30 • 9-5, 5 days per week • Practical activities, theory seminars, doing an industry challenge • One module of learning at a time • Varied assessment strategy, related to professional formats/outputs.
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  Industry challenges –examples • Optimise pipe flow for a drinks manufacturer • Produce and validate a design for a mobile climbing wall • Design and build a moisture sensor for a timber-framed building • Develop a channel model to predict whether a satellite communications link will work • Respecify material for a torque arm.
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  Social but personallearning • Substantial contact time with educators • Work in teams and independently • Personal tutor to support • Personalised skills support through the ASK Centre • Student services close by.
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  Student recruitment • A-Levelmaths and physics not required • We support maths learning, contextualised and focused on thinking mathematically, using maths as a tool • We offer an RPEL route for students without traditional qualifications • Bursaries to support underrepresented groups, including women.
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  Applying NMITE principles •We had the benefit of starting a whole new institution • In an established context: • Incremental change and retrofitting AL, AfL and professional capabilities is hard, and you will meet resistance • Much easier as part of a programme refresh • Start by agreeing a Programme Ethos with everyone involved: • It empowers the design team to make decisions without wide consultation every time • It helps to navigate the push-back to changing technical content in the curriculum • Involve students as equal partners in the design process (see Wood & Gibbs 2019; Gibbs & Wood 2021) • Get your quality team involved early and take them on the journey with you.
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  A Programme Ethos •A dynamic, outward-facing statement of the programmes’ purpose and values and the learning environment we aspire to. Should communicate in clear language: • the programme’s purpose(s) • educational and discipline and professional values • nature of the learning environment for students • key approaches to teaching, learning and assessment • Not easy to develop – but worth the initial investment to save time (and arguments!) later • See O’Neill (2015).
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  A call toaction… • If we’re going to create new engineers for a changing world… • We need to: • Let go of trying to teach them about all research specialisms in departments • Deliver solid foundations in engineering science • Use the topics we teach as a context to develop skills in engineering thinking • Infuse learning experiences with professional skills development • Connect learning to engineering in industry • Help students understand their own potential and find where they fit.
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  References Donovan, M. S.,Bransford, J. D. & Pellegrino, James W. (Eds.). (1999). How People Learn: Bridging Research & Practice. Washington DC: National Academy Press. Engineering UK (2023). 115,000 More Girls Need to Study Maths or Physics A Levels to Bridge Gender Gap in Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.engineeringuk.com/news-views/115-000-more-girls-need-to-study-maths-or-physics-a-levels-to-bridge-gender-gap-in-higher-education/ Gibbs, B. & Wood, G. C. (2021). How Can Student Partnerships Stimulate Organisational Learning in Higher Education Institutions? Teaching in Higher Education, 1–14. Graham, R. (2012). Achieving Excellence in Engineering Education: The Ingredients of Successful Change. London: Royal Academy of Engineering. Habbershaw, D.L., Sharp, B.F. & Wood, G.C. (2019). Leading the Way with Integrative Projects to support Skills Development. Conference presentation at Enhancing Student Learning Through Innovative Scholarship, Edinburgh, 18-19 July 2019. Available at www.garycwood.uk. Kent-Waters, J., Seago, O,. & Smith, L. (2018) A Compendium of Assessment Techniques in Higher Education from Students’ Perspectives. Edited by Samantha Pugh. Leeds: Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence.Available at: https://teachingexcellence.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/89/2018/10/PUGHcompendiumcomplete.pdf. O’Neill, Geraldine (2015). Curriculum Design in Higher Education: Theory to Practice, 1st Edition. Chapter 3: Needs Analysis and Educational Philosophy. Dublin: UCD Learning & Teaching. Available at: https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/rest/bitstreams/20093/retrieve. The IET (2019). Skills and demand in industry: 2019 Survey. Stevenage: The Institution of Engineering and Technology. Available at: www.theiet.org/media/4812/skills- survey2019.pdf. Perkins, J. (2013). Professor John Perkins’s Review of Engineering Skills. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254885/bis-13-1269-professor-john-perkins-review-of-engineering- skills.pdf Royal Academy of Engineering. (2007). Educating Engineers for the 21st Century. London: Royal Academy of Engineering. Royal Academy of Engineering. (2010). Engineering Graduates for Industry. London: Royal Academy of Engineering. Royal Academy of Engineering. (2019). Engineering Skills for the Future: The 2012 Perkins Review Revisited. London: Royal Academy of Engineering Wood, G. C. & Gibbs, B. (2019). Students as Partners in the Design and Practice of Engineering Education: Understanding and Enabling Development of Intellectual Abilities, in: Malik, M., Andrews, J., Clark, R., and Broadbent, R. (Eds.), Realising Ambitions: Sixth Annual Symposium of the UK&I Engineering Education Research Network, (pp. 231–245). Portsmouth: University of Portsmouth.
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  New Engineers fora Changing World Professor Gary C Wood Academic Director, New Model Institute for Technology & Engineering [email protected] | @GC_Wood | www.garycwood.uk