Pedagogy, Practice and Procedure (The P 3 Project) - Educating Engineering Managers A Model for the Future

Over the past two decades there has been much discussion about how to best educate Engineering Managers. Indeed, traditional Management Education within Business School Settings has been subjected to considerable criticism, with, some suggesting that traditional MBA programmes lack engineering context and application and thus fail to meet the needs of both employers and students. Conversely, others postulate that Business Schools provide graduate students with generic skills and transferable competencies and are thus exactly engineering managers should be educated. Looking critically at Engineering Management Education within an Engineering School, this paper suggests that graduate level Engineering Management Education needs to be led by Engineers who have experience in industry and who also are qualified in management. It introduces a model of organisational change developed specifically for an Engineering Education setting and considers how that model may be best applied to an Engineering Management Education settin

Trailing or Failing? A Hidden Mental Health Issue: The Changing Futures Project

The ‘Changing Futures Project’ aimed to directly tackle an issue that has been long reported in both academic and professional body spheres, that of student failure in engineering education[1,2]. It focused on the experiences of 96 Engineering & Applied Science students who were classified as ‘failing’ or ‘trailing’ in one or more modules. One of the unforeseen outcomes of the project was the high numbers of students who reported that they had been experiencing mental health problems at the time when they found themselves failing. By putting in a series of academic and individual support interventions, including referring students to the relevant counselling and medical support services, the project proved to be a great success, with all but three students within the original sample progressing to the next level of their academic journey

From Trailing & Failing to Learning & Progressing:A bespoke approach to failure in engineering education

Starting with the research question “How can we reverse the negative impact of failure on engineering students’ futures?” the ‘Changing Futures Project’ is a five year longitudinal project which aims to identify and address the pedagogy of failure, and in doing so make a positive difference to students’ educational outcomes and progress. It builds on previous work [1, 2] to look at the issues behind ‘failure’ from the perspectives of individual students. In looking at the issues through the eyes of the students themselves this paper makes a distinctive contribution to current debates to the field of engineering education in general, but particularly in the areas of attrition, retention and student support. The paper ends with a total of 10 recommendations for institutions, colleagues and student

Promoting scholarship - The way forward: Learning & teaching research in a complex environment – A typology

This paper provides a critical overview into a distinctive typology of Learning and Teaching Research developed at a relatively small, research-led UK University. Based upon research into staff perceptions of the relationship between learning and teaching research and practice, the model represents an holistic approach to evidence-based learning and teaching practice in Contemporary Higher Education

The efficacy of using human myoelectric signals to control the limbs of robots in space

This project was designed to investigate the usefulness of the myoelectric signal as a control in robotics applications. More specifically, the neural patterns associated with human arm and hand actions were studied to determine the efficacy of using these myoelectric signals to control the manipulator arm of a robot. The advantage of this approach to robotic control was the use of well-defined and well-practiced neural patterns already available to the system, as opposed to requiring the human operator to learn new tasks and establish new neural patterns in learning to control a joystick or mechanical coupling device

Motor development research : I. The lessons of history revisited (the 18th to the 20th century)

In 1989, Clark and Whitall asked the question “What is motor development”. They were referring to the study of motor development as an academic research enterprise and answered their question primarily by describing four relatively distinct time periods characterized by changes in focus, theories or concepts and methodology. Their last period was named the process-oriented period (1970-1989). In hindsight, it seems clear that their last period could be divided into two separate historical time periods: the information-processing period (1970-1982) and the dynamical systems period (1982-2000). In the present paper, we briefly revisit the first three periods defined by Clark and Whitall, and expand and elaborate on the two periods from 1970 to the turn of the century. Each period is delineated by key papers and the major changes in focus, theories or concepts and methodology. Major findings about motor development are also described from some papers as a means of showing the progression of knowledge

A Problem Shared… The Value of Peer Mentoring as a Tool for Supporting Lifelong Learning in Higher Education :A Study of the Experiences of Mature and Black & Ethnic Minority Students

The role played by formal Peer Mentoring programmes in supporting learners within Higher Education is reflected in the literature. However, few studies have focused on the contribution made by formal Peer Mentoring Programmes in supporting BME and mature learners at University. Moreover, whilst a significant amount of previous work suggests that Peer Mentoring promotes student retention, there is little empirical evidence regarding the degree to which formal Peer Mentoring Programmes promote academic success with regards to non-traditional learners. Thus, in drawing attention to the early stages of a large international study, this paper begins to provide distinctive insight into the pedagogical and social value of Peer Mentoring from the perspectives of two distinctive groups of lifelong learners

Process and Domain Specificity in Regions Engaged for Face Processing: An fMRI Study of Perceptual Differentiation

The degree to which face-specific brain regions are specialized for different kinds of perceptual processing is debated. This study parametrically varied demands on featural, first-order configural, or second-order configural processing of faces and houses in a perceptual matching task to determine the extent to which the process of perceptual differentiation was selective for faces regardless of processing type (domain-specific account), specialized for specific types of perceptual processing regardless of category (process-specific account), engaged in category-optimized processing (i.e., configural face processing or featural house processing), or reflected generalized perceptual differentiation (i.e., differentiation that crosses category and processing type boundaries). ROIs were identified in a separate localizer run or with a similarity regressor in the face-matching runs. The predominant principle accounting for fMRI signal modulation in most regions was generalized perceptual differentiation. Nearly all regions showed perceptual differentiation for both faces and houses for more than one processing type, even if the region was identified as face-preferential in the localizer run. Consistent with process specificity, some regions showed perceptual differentiation for first-order processing of faces and houses (right fusiform face area and occipito-temporal cortex and right lateral occipital complex), but not for featural or second-order processing. Somewhat consistent with domain specificity, the right inferior frontal gyrus showed perceptual differentiation only for faces in the featural matching task. The present findings demonstrate that the majority of regions involved in perceptual differentiation of faces are also involved in differentiation of other visually homogenous categories