Students’ perceptions of a major engineering curriculum reform

As the demands of industry are evolving and new generations of students are entering universities, many engineering faculties invest time in curriculum reforms based on inspirational innovations, underpinned by engineering education research. The Faculty of Engineering Technology (FET) of KU Leuven had an additional argument to implement a huge programme reform: this faculty, hosting more than 6000 students spread across seven campuses in Flanders (Belgium), was an amalgam of different traditions and visions. Their merger into one faculty in 2013 aimed to optimize the organisation of research, education and community service. The goal of the programme reform in 2020-2021 was fourteenfold: enhancing our typical profile of (1) hands-on engineering in (2) strong interaction with the labour market and setting up (3) a technology hub with more attention to (4) multidisciplinarity, (5) professional competencies, (6) personal development & support, (7) lifelong learning and (8) challenges including (9) complex problem solving. The reform also aims to increase the (10) attractiveness and (11) social relevance of the programmes. By strengthening the internal coherence in the faculty, we can exploit the (12) multicampus narrative to offer students more choices and develop their (13) future disciplinary self, supported by (14) choice guidance. This paper describes how the curriculum was adapted in order to achieve these goals and presents the results of perception measurements organised among freshmen who followed the old programme in 2019-2020 and freshmen registered in the new programme in 2020-2021. Of foremost importance is the increased feeling that the professional competencies are essential for an engineer

Development of a Situational Judgement Test and an assessment of its efficacy as a stimulus of metacognitive behaviour in engineering students

Metacognition entails the conscious evaluation and control of one\u27s cognitive processes. This meta-level control of cognitive process is not essential for all activities, but in the domain of problem solving and the development of new expertise, conscious control of mental functioning is essential to success. Previous studies have shown a relationship between metacognitive knowledge & skills and student self-regulated learning, self-efficacy and more generally, with success in academic and non-academic endeavours; they represent critical skills for an aspiring engineer to possess for their future employability. Metacognition can be stimulated by allowing students to engage and reflect on the problem-solving process. Studies in STEM education focus almost entirely on the use of technical problems for the source of this stimulation. The drawback of this approach is that these problems generally require prior knowledge of physics or mathematics for the students to engage in the process. Recent research utilising naturalistic observations of students’ behaviour while they were engaged in technical problem solving found that metacognitive knowledge and skills can be categorised into discrete metacognitive behaviours. Specifically, metacognitive behaviour can be measured through analysis of students’ discourse with one another as they engage in the problem-solving process. This research utilised a sequential mixed methods design, which contained two strands – the first sought to develop a Situational Judgment Test (SJT) while the second strand sought to utilise the SJT as a stimulus of metacognitive behaviour. An SJT was developed, evaluated by fifty-three engineering professionals in eleven expert panels and rolled out to three hundred and third four final year and masters level engineering students at TU Dublin and KU Leuven, who took the SJT as a test. The SJT items were then delivered to a further fifty-five first year engineering students at TU Dublin, this time in groups, for them to choose responses and discuss them with their peers. The items which stimulated metacognitive behaviour amongst these students were identified using the Naturalistic Observations of Metacognition in Engineering students (NOME) protocol. The resulting items were provided to a group of eight first year engineering students and the NOME protocol was re-applied to evaluate the efficacy of the new metacognitive learning resource in stimulating metacognitive behaviour. The development of a means of stimulating metacognitive behaviour that was not conditional on students’ having prior knowledge of physics and mathematics or a reliance on inventory style assessment allowed iii for a better-quality assessment of a students’ metacognitive knowledge and skills. Allowing students to apply their metacognitive knowledge and skills in groups permitted students to construct tools of higher mental functioning though peer dialogue, using an SJT in the stimulation of this dialogue had pedagogical merit, as particular SJT items proved highly effective in eliciting the use of metacognitive skills. This research work aims to add to engineering education scholarship in three ways. Firstly, to provide an engineering specific SJT to enable educators to identify areas of relative strength and weakness in students’ professional judgements in order to better prepare them for their future careers. Secondly, to use the insights and resources generated from the development and evaluation of the SJT to develop a resource for engineering educators to stimulate students’ metacognitive behaviour that does not rely on a students’ prior knowledge of physics and mathematics, in order to provide them with the skills to self-regulate their learning. Thirdly, this research provides fresh insights into how engineering student’s exhibit metacognitive behaviours when working in groups, adding to an existing body of literature about how students exhibit these behaviours during the problem-solving process

Challenges for engineering students working with authentic complex problems

Engineers are important participants in solving societal, environmental and technical problems. However, due to an increasing complexity in relation to these problems new interdisciplinary competences are needed in engineering. Instead of students working with monodisciplinary problems, a situation where students work with authentic complex problems in interdisciplinary teams together with a company may scaffold development of new competences. The question is: What are the challenges for students structuring the work on authentic interdisciplinary problems? This study explores a three-day event where 7 students from Aalborg University (AAU) from four different faculties and one student from University College North Denmark (UCN), (6th-10th semester), worked in two groups at a large Danish company, solving authentic complex problems. The event was structured as a Hackathon where the students for three days worked with problem identification, problem analysis and finalizing with a pitch competition presenting their findings. During the event the students had workshops to support the work and they had the opportunity to use employees from the company as facilitators. It was an extracurricular activity during the summer holiday season. The methodology used for data collection was qualitative both in terms of observations and participants’ reflection reports. The students were observed during the whole event. Findings from this part of a larger study indicated, that students experience inability to transfer and transform project competences from their previous disciplinary experiences to an interdisciplinary setting

Exploring the practical use of a collaborative robot for academic purposes

This article presents a set of experiences related to the setup and exploration of potential educational uses of a collaborative robot (cobot). The basic principles that have guided the work carried out have been three. First and foremost, study of all the functionalities offered by the robot and exploration of its potential academic uses both in subjects focused on industrial robotics and in subjects of related disciplines (automation, communications, computer vision). Second, achieve the total integration of the cobot at the laboratory, seeking not only independent uses of it but also seeking for applications (laboratory practices) in which the cobot interacts with some of the other devices already existing at the laboratory (other industrial robots and a flexible manufacturing system). Third, reuse of some available components and minimization of the number and associated cost of required new components. The experiences, carried out following a project-based learning methodology under the framework of bachelor and master subjects and thesis, have focused on the integration of mechanical, electronic and programming aspects in new design solutions (end effector, cooperative workspace, artificial vision system integration) and case studies (advanced task programming, cybersecure communication, remote access). These experiences have consolidated the students' acquisition of skills in the transition to professional life by having the close collaboration of the university faculty with the experts of the robotics company.Postprint (published version