Designing the Future

While there have been improvements in Australian engineering education since the 1990s, there are still strong concerns that more progress needs to be made, particularly in the areas of developing graduate competencies and in outcomes-based curricula. This paper reports on the findings from a two-day ALTC-funded forum that sought to establish a shared understanding with the 3 stakeholders (students, academics and industry) about how to achieve a design-based engineering curriculum. This paper reports on the findings from the first day’s activities and reveals that there is a shared desire for design and project-based curricula that would encourage the development of the ‘three-dimensional’ graduate: one who has technical, personal and professional and systems-thinking/design-based competence. Introduction This paper presents selected findings from a two-day ALTC-funded regional forum held in April 2009 at the University of New South Wales, Australia, as part of the ALTC project “Design based curriculum reform within engineering education”. A forum was proposed for the project because of its effectiveness in focusing stakeholders towards the systemic issues necessary to improve design pedagogy throughout the curriculum (Dym, 2005). The forum brought together 40 leading academics from around Australia, 40 industry representatives primarily from within the Sydney basin and 20 senior students, to reconceptualise engineering curricula around a design core. An engineering design approach was used to consider how a curriculum based strongly around engineering design, that is: problem solving, engineering application and practice, might be achieved. While the forum had many aims, on the first day participants engaged in a structured workshop to identify emerging trends and needs, individual and organisational responses to these challenges, and from this, to specify the competencies which graduate engineers require. It is these findings which are the focus of this paper. The current ALTC project builds on the outcomes and recommendation of a previous ALTC project report entitled “Engineers for the Future: addressing the supply and quality of Australian engineering graduates for the 21 century” (King, 2008). This report reveals that whilst progress has been made in addressing the concerns raised in a 1995-96 review of the national engineering education system (IEA, 1996 in King, 2008), there are areas that have not progressed as expected. The areas relevant to this project are: ISBN 1 876346 59 0 © 2009 AAEE 2009 293 • High levels of student attrition • Lower incentives within the system for improving teaching than for developing research • Effect of research appointments over teaching appointments and barriers to promotion • Concerns that the balance of subjects within current engineering curricula are not adequately matched to graduates’ and industry’s current and future needs It is the last of these areas that this forum sought to address synergistically with recommendation 3 of the preceding ALTC project report (King, 2008): “Engineering schools must develop best practice engineering education, promote student learning and deliver intended graduate outcomes. Curriculum will be based on sound pedagogy, embrace concepts of inclusivity and be adaptable to new technologies and inter-disciplinary areas.” The forum focused on the following milestones within this recommendation: • Increasing employer satisfaction with engineering graduates • Increasing graduate satisfaction with educational experiences and transitions to employment • Increasing recognition and empowerment of engineering educators within universities. • Systematic and holistic educational design practices with learning experiences and assessment strategies that focus on delivery of designated graduate outcomes (King, 2008). The first day’s workshop activities were developed in order to converge quickly on a shared understanding of the required graduate competencies, without churning over old ground. Methodology A unique aspect of this forum was the active involvement of a broad cross-section of participants from industry (37%), academia (49%) and students (14%) totalling 80 in all. The participants generated a significant amount of data (286 lines of comments) from three activities. The comments were later transcribed and triangulated with onsite contemporaneous summaries from several researchers and references to the literature. The data was inductively analysed to reveal emerging themes/categories which were subsequently refined by construct validation (Trochim, 2006). The categories were examined from Activity 1 through to Activity 3 with the intention of identifying relationships which might suggest a narrative. That is, were there any obvious implications for curriculum reform emanating from the data? The results were also examined to determine whether the activities were sufficient as a convergent process for connecting future and current needs to competencies. Day 1 session 1 consisted of keynote presentations followed by the three workshop activities. Each activity was introduced by the session convenor, with the focus question on a slide projected onto the screen. Participants were organised into 10 tables of 8, roughly distributed according to the overall demographics of the workshop. Each of the tables had butcher’s paper, whiteboard pens and a scribe nominated by the group. Each activity had approximately 30 minutes discussion and scribing, after which a spokesperson from each table verbally summarised their results to the rest of the forum. At the end of each activity the butcher’s paper was collected. After the forum the comments were transcribed and then classified into categories by a domain expert. Two other researchers then separately classified the responses and agreed on the resulting categories with minor revisions. The classifications of comments within each category were then refined by the domain expert and one researcher; during this process the category descriptions were further refined either by aggregation into a dominant descriptor or through decomposition into complementary descriptors. For example, “need for increased breadth and depth of engineering degrees” was decomposed into (1) Breadth of knowledge base, (2) Depth of learning/authenticity and (3) Changing curriculum to suit the interpreted emphasis/intent of particular comments. The refinement process was cross-checked and correlated by both main researchers. The categories were then tallied to reveal the top six themes, and the process was repeated with Activity 2. For Activity 3, the responses to the required graduate competencies were mapped against the CDIO syllabus (Crawley, 2001) as this 20th Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference University of Adelaide, 6-9 December 2009 ISBN 1 876346 59 0 © 2009 AAEE 2009 294 taxonomy provides up to 4 levels of increasing specificity, allowing for a more accurate representation of the transcribed comments. The resulting competencies were then tallied to arrive at the top six. Results and Analysis There were a substantial number of categories (24 in total) identified from the transcripts as indicated in Table 1. Table 1 Total Identified Categories Social Awareness Public Perception Breadth of Knowledge Base Increased Specialisation Practical Experience Design Environmental Awareness Rapid Changes in Technology Effects of Globalisation Engineering Systems Scale or Scope of Engineering Problems Professionalism Research/Teaching Dilemma Changing Student Demographics Mobility and Transferable Skills/Qualifications Lifelong Learning Depth of Learning/Authenticity Engagement Changing Engineering Definition Changing Engineering Problem Focus Changing Academic Demographics Changing Curriculum Pathways to Engineering Communication Activity 1 asked the participants: What emerging trends in the environment are having an increasing impact on engineers and engineering organisations? The top six emerging trends are shown in Table 2. Table 2 Activity 1: emerging trends – top 6 categories In activity 2 the participants were asked: How are you (and your organisation) dealing/coping with the pressures to survive and thrive in this emerging environment? How are engineering educators adapting? How are universities adapting? This question was asked to prompt the participants to reflect (individually or organisationally) on the strengths/strategies and/or weaknesses/gaps that exist in response to the opportunities or threats presented by the external environment. The question was posed in this way in the expectation that gaps in the competencies of employees and future graduates would be identified in the subsequent activity. The top six responses are shown in Table 3. Table 3 Activity 2: responding to change – top 6 categories % theme 1 29% changing curriculum 2 18% practical experience 3 18% impacts of globalisation % category 1 22% impacts of globalisation 2 21% environmental awareness 3 18% breadth of knowledge base 4 18% engineering systems 5 13% rapid changes in technology 6 13% research/teaching dilemma 20th Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference University of Adelaide, 6-9 December 2009 ISBN 1 876346 59 0 © 2009 AAEE 2009 295 4 12% research/teaching dilemma 5 12% navigation (pathways to Engineering) 6 11% breadth of knowledge base In the final workshop activity in session 1, participants were asked: What capabilities will employees, and specifically graduate engineers require if they are to effectively contribute to their organisations and communities into the future? Table 4 Activity 3: top 6 graduate capabilities From the resulting analysis it would appear that the questions served to focus the participants’ attention effectively on the three dimensions: emerging trends; organisational responses; and graduate competencies. However, it should be noted that the responses to Activity 2 were framed mo