Enhancing the employability of Brunel students: Assessment and evaluation of a Level 1 multidisciplinary project based teaching activity in the School of Engineering and Design

The Level 1 Multidisciplinary Project (MDP) is a weeklong project that takes place in the last week of Term 1. It involves first year undergraduate students from across the School subject areas of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Design. The project is designed to be a teaching activity that removes the barrier of academic ability by involving a non‐discipline technical element, the primary emphasis being on the development of key transferable skills and the utilisation of problem solving skills that students have begun to develop in their first term at university. Each year around 450 students take part in MDP and they are put into mixed discipline groups of 8 or 9 students tasked with designing, building and demonstrating Lego Mindstorms and BASIC Stamp micro‐controlled vehicles to tackle an obstacle course. This report presents an analysis of responses from students to an online survey set up to evaluate the MDP. The survey was created using the online ‘SurveyMonkey’ website and was made live on 30th March 2011. The survey consisted of 15 questions, including tick box style quantitative questions along with some text based qualitative questions. There was also a request for contact details to be provided, if students would be happy to be contacted for a follow‐up discussion. The aim of the survey was to obtain feedback from students in each subject area, in each academic year group that has taken part in the MDP in the School of Engineering and Design. The survey was designed to try and assess student experiences and recollections of the project activity, to evaluate how the MDP has evolved over the four years it has taken place and inform the continued development of the MDP in future academic years. Information about the survey was sent by email to all students that have participated in the MDP since it was introduced in the 2007/2008 academic year (approximately 1700 students). The emails were written by Dr David Smith who is responsible for the running of the MDP and Dr Jo Cole who is involved in the co‐ordination of the MDP, inviting students to complete the online questionnaire. This report is broken into sections, giving an overview of the survey results as a whole, before looking at key observations in the data by year and by subject area. The survey questions are given in Appendix A with summary charts of the tick box responses given in Appendix B and the raw data from all questions provided by SurveyMonkey in Appendix C. Key points raised in the follow‐up one to‐one email and phone discussions are then presented, with full transcripts of the questions and answers from these discussions given in Appendix D, along with feedback from the professional bodies that accredit the different undergraduate courses taking part in the MDP and the view of the Brunel Placement and Careers Office. A list of conclusions is then given, drawn up to reflect the aspects of the MDP that need improvement, to be used as input to the development of the MDP for the coming academic year. Collation of the survey data, follow‐up discussions with students and initial preparation of this report were conducted by Dianna Reid, with funding provided by the Brunel Academic Practice and Development Unit as part of a 2011 Learning and Teaching Innovation Fund award under project code 2LA026

Deleuze and the narrative forms of educational otherness

I pull my copy of Metrophage out of its battered pink paper folder. It is suitably badly printed, and the black and white stripes of the dysfunctional roller have left interference patterns running from the right to the left that distract the eye and make discernment of the faint courier words difficult and time consuming. I randomly separate the pages and start reading: "He stood and Nimble Virtue tossed a packet of Mad Love at his feet. It came to rest by the toe of his boot, where the water was icing up over a flaking patch of dried blood. Welding marks, like narrow scars of slag. The slaughterhouse had been grafted together from a stack of old Sea Train cargo containers. A cryogenic pump hummed at the far end of the place, like a beating heart, pushing liquid oxygen through the network of pipes that crisscrossed the walls and floor. From the ceiling, dull steel hooks held shapeless slabs of discoloured meat. Jonny looked at the slunk merchant. Kadrey (1995, part 3, p. 1)." When we read this passage, what is the tenor of the voice that we might deploy through the use of the third person narrative? In the examination of educational narrative forms, whether through qualitative research or self-evaluation exercises, one might discern many voices that could crowd oneï½s analytical frame. The problem for education is straightforward, and has been neatly summarised by Inna Semetsky (2004) when she said, ï½[A] new non-representational language of expression, exemplified in what Deleuze (1994b) called a performative or modulating aspect, is being created by means of the language structure going through the process of its own becoming-other and undergoing a series of transformations giving birth to a new, as though foreign and unfamiliar, other language,ï½ (p. 316)

Letter from Chancellor Cole Establishing the Environmental Advisory Performance Committee (EPAC)

A letter written by Chancellor Cole to the Director of the Physical Plant Patrick Daly, establishing the Environmental Performance Advisory Committee (EPAC) and charging it with numerous tasks. This committee is now the Chancellor\u27s Sustainability Committee and currently chaired by Campus Sustainability Manager, Ezra Small

Introduction to Multiple Literacies Theory: A Deleuzian Perspective

This book comes at a time when literacy has perhaps been overly researched and theorized around the world. Governments are especially interested in investigating and collecting data about how their citizens become literate. One might legitimately ask the question: Why do we need more research and theory about literacy? The short answer to this question is that we do not need more information about the processes of literacy. What we do need is work that combines data with a theoretical frame that makes sense of the diverse literacy practices and complex demographics of populations through which literacy is now apparent. In poststructural terms, it could be said that literacy research is an area of `overcoding (Webb, 2009). This means that the balance between signification and the content of the signification is out of phase. For example, the enormous attention that has been given to reading comprehension in educational research is incongruous with the role that reading comprehension plays in the educational process. Reading comprehension has been over-coded by outside bodies solely interested in the results of reading comprehension, i.e., literacy tests. This volume addresses this situation by going outside of the norm, and proposing a new way of conceptualizing literacy, Multiple Literacies Theory (Masny, 2006), combined with data to solidify this view

SOARING Towards Positive Transformation and Change

The SOAR strategic thinking and planning framework is a dynamic, modern, and innovative approach for framing strategic thinking, assessing individual and team performance, building strategy, and creating strategic plans. SOAR stands for strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. As a framework, SOAR focuses on the formulation and implementation of a positive strategy by identifying strengths, building creativity in the form of opportunities, encouraging individuals and teams to share aspirations, and determining measurable and meaningful results. This article presents the SOAR framework’s evolution from the fields of strategy, organization development and change, and Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to the discipline of positive organizational scholarship (POS)

High-Throughput Nanoliter Dispensing Device for Biological Applications

Pathogen identification is a field that can contribute largely to the prevention of the spreading of illness and disease. In the past, pathogen identification has been a long and arduous process due to the time-consuming processes and steps that requires technician’s time and effort. With new technologies emerging however, screening of bacteria colonies can be done in a quick and high-throughput way. The problem is that using the current methods, bacteria cannot be transferred to petri dishes fast enough to keep up with the new screening methods. The current study focuses on exploring different methods to create an ergonomic device that can dispense and inoculate bacteria cells onto petri dishes in a fast, repeatable, and high-throughput manner. The testing of bacteria in liquid allows for the most versatility because bacteria already suspended in liquid could be tested or bacteria could be suspended in liquid from a solid if needed. Different methods of dispensing liquid were tested such as solenoid valves, and different methods of dispenser movements in the X-Y plane around the surface of the petri dishes were tested such as a five-bar mechanism controlled by two rotary motors. It was found that a small solenoid valve in combination with either a five-bar mechanism with two motors or a simple XY stage were both ergonomic and able to provide high-throughput dispensing of bacteria colonies. Based on the devices performance, it can dispense 86 microliter droplets with 8 millimeters of spacing in 69 seconds (1.25 drops per second)

Factors governing the behaviour of aqueous methane in narrow pores

All-atom equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate the behaviour of aqueous methane confined in 1-nm-wide pores obtained from different materials. Models for silica, alumina and magnesium oxide were used to construct the slit-shaped pores. The results show that methane solubility in confined water strongly depends on the confining material, with silica yielding the highest solubility in the systems considered here. The molecular structure of confined water differs within the three pores, and density fluctuations reveal that the silica pore is effectively less 'hydrophilic' than the other two pores considered. Comparing the water fluctuation autocorrelation function with local diffusion coefficients of methane across the hydrated pores we observed a direct proportional coupling between methane and water dynamics. These simulation results help to understand the behaviour of gas in water confined within narrow subsurface formations, with possible implications for fluid transport

CO2-C4H10 Mixtures Simulated in Silica Slit Pores: Relation between Structure and Dynamics

Equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations were conducted for pure n-butane and for mixtures containing n-butane and carbon dioxide confined in 2 nm wide slit-shaped pores carved out of cristobalite silica. A range of thermodynamic conditions was explored, including temperatures ranging from subcritical to supercritical, and various densities. Preferential adsorption of carbon dioxide near the -OH groups on the surface was observed, where the adsorbed CO2 molecules tend to interact simultaneously with more than one -OH group. Analysis of the simulation results suggests that the preferential CO2 adsorption to the pore walls weakens the adsorption of n-butane, lowers the activation energy for n-butane diffusivity, and consequently enhances n-butane mobility. The diffusion results obtained for pure CO2 are consistent with strong adsorption on the pore walls, as the CO2 self-diffusion coefficient is low at low densities, increases with loading, and exhibits a maximum as the density is increased further because of hindrance effects. As the temperature increases, the maximum in self-diffusion coefficient is narrower, steeper, and shifted to lower loading. The simulation results are also quantified in terms of molecular density profiles for both butane and CO2 and in terms of residence time of the various molecules near the solid substrate. Our results could be useful for designing separation devices and also for better understanding the behavior of fluids in subsurface environments