A systematic literature review of university-industry partnerships in engineering education

Abstract

Over the last few decades, a wide range of works have featured studies documenting successful pedagogic collaborations in the form of university-industry partnerships in engineering education. In light of this, we conducted a systematic literature review of these studies centred around fi ve key research questions: (a) purposes of university-industry collaborations, (b) theories used to guide such work, (c) types of methods employed, (d) evidence-based best practices identi fi ed and (e) areas of future work to be explored. Publications were selected for inclusion by screening and appraising results obtained from databases and keywords re fi ned through a scoping study. We conclude from our fi ndings that future studies would bene fi t from better alignment with literature or theoretical frameworks and speci fi c robust methods. Additionally, early and middle years of undergraduate engineering programs o ff er underutilised opportunities for partnership, in line with designing a more futures-focused educational curriculum.