Situationsbaseret projektvejledning

Projektvejledning vil altid være afhængig af den konkrete situation og skal derfor tilpasses de institutionelle rammer, de faglige mål, de studerende og projektprocessen. I denne artikel udfoldes forståelsen af vejledning ud fra begrebet situationsbaseret vejledning. Det handler om at kunne aflæse de studerendes samarbejdsmønstre og behov i de forskellige faser af projektarbejdet og vælge de bedst mulige undervisningsstrategier til at skabe en progression hen imod de opstillede læringsmål. Projektvejlederen skal kunne være i stand til at veksle imellemforskellige strategier, roller og funktioner afhængig af behovet. En del af udfordringen kan imødegås ved planlægningen og refleksion over samarbejdet med gruppen, men en del ligger også i at være opmærksom og spørge ind til de studerendes behov i selve vejledningssituationen. Heri ligger kunsten at kunne praktisere situationsbaseret projektvejledning

Sustainability Matters

The purpose of this study was to identify patterns of change in students’ awareness of, interest in and engagement with sustainability issues during the process of acclimatisation to their PBL engineering studies, and to look for differences between engineering disciplines with respect to these aspects. This study used a longitudinal qualitative approach with a theory-led thematic analysis. There were 16 participants in total, interviewed at 3 intervals during a period of 18 months at a faculty of engineering in Denmark. The authors found a pattern of increase in sustainability awareness, interest, and engagement throughout the three semesters of the study. Some differences between engineering disciplines were visible, especially between sustainability-oriented engineering and the others. Most students who increased their sustainability awareness and interest were also likely to engage further with the topic. That engagement built up from individual engagement, to professional engagement and for some, into institutional and public sphere engagement. The findings are timely given the pressure faced by engineering education to incorporate sustainability issues. It provides avenues for educating engineering graduates who will display interest, awareness, and engagement with sustainability issues. It suggests institutional engagement as a potential avenue to explore for engineering educators

Response strategies for curriculum change in engineering

© 2015, The Author(s). During the last 25 years, there have been many calls for new engineering competencies and a corresponding gradual change in both curriculum and pedagogy in engineering education. This has been a global trend, in the US, Europe, Australia and now emerging in the rest of the world. Basically, there have been two main types of societal challenges that many engineering institutions have responded to: the employability skills of graduates and the need for a sustainability approach to engineering. These are two very different challenges and societal needs; however, the ways engineering institutions have responded form a consistent pattern across many of the content aspects. No matter the specific character of change, three very different curriculum strategies seem to have evolved: an add-on strategy, an integration strategy or a re-building strategy; the latter involves substantial curriculum re-design. The add-on strategy and integration strategy are the ones most commonly used, whereas the re-building strategy is at an emerging stage in most engineering education communities. Most engineering schools find it very challenging to re-build an entire curriculum, so smaller changes are generally preferred. The purpose of this article is to conceptualise these institutional response strategies in a wider literature and present examples of curriculum change within both employability and sustainability. We will maintain that all these strategies are based on management decisions as well as academic faculty decisions; however the implications for using the various strategies are very different in terms of system change, role of disciplines, leader interventions and faculty development strategies. Furthermore, institutions might use all types of response strategies in different programs and in different semesters. The conceptual framework presented here can provide analytical anchors, hopefully creating more awareness of the complexity of systemic change