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

Professional competencies in engineering education: the PREFERed-way

Professional competencies vary across engineering job characteristics. The design of the educational environment should take into account this diversity and enable students to develop career awareness. The European project PREFER (Professional Roles and Employability for Future EngineeRs) has developed instruments to make engineering students aware of the existence of professional roles and their associated competency profiles. These are designed and validated in strong interaction with industry, guaranteeing a discipline-independent, future-proof framework that is ready to implement in the engineering curriculum. In this paper, we describe the integration of this framework in the Faculty of Engineering Technology of KU Leuven, Belgium. The selection of professional competencies based on professional roles, the adaptive level of the professional competencies thanks to electives and the collaborative assessment of the students by experts in professional competencies and experts in technological competencies, are key elements of the new engineering curriculum. All of them are developed thanks to a university-business collaboration. The reformed curriculum will start from the academic year 2020-2021

A Look Inside The Engineering Students’ Backpack: Differences In Engineering Capital According To Gender Or Migration Background.

Every student has a unique combination of experiences, resources and social networks related to engineering, called ‘engineering capital’, derived from Archer’s concept of ‘science capital’. The engineering capital gathered throughout life creates a backpack that impacts someone’s aspirations to study engineering, as well as the performance and persistence in the programme itself. Engineering technology is one of the most homogeneous fields within the STEM domain, being mostly white and male. To stimulate a more diverse engineering technology field, this research paper investigates the relationship between the level of engineering capital and gender or migration background, as well as the influence of engineering capital on aspiration and performance within the engineering technology field. Through an online survey, last-year secondary education pupils in math/science tracks (N = 490, March 2023), and first-year engineering technology students (N =391, October 2022) in Belgium were asked about their engineering capital, and engineering aspiration (pupils) or performance (students). Results disclose little difference in engineering capital, engineering aspiration, or engineering performance for students with a migration background. However, female pupils appear to have less engineering capital than male pupils, and in need of more engineering capital to gain an interest in engineering technology compared to male pupils. Once women start the engineering technology program, engineering capital does not influence female students’ performance differently than male students. It is possible that only those with a heavy backpack of engineering capital find their way to the program. That is why it is important that educators stimulate students’ engineering capital

An Embedded Intervention To Support The Development Of Student Feedback Literacy

Feedback literacy is an emerging concept. It is seen as an individual competency that facilitates taking an active role in contemporary feedback processes. As such, it is a valuable skill not only in the classroom, but also in students\u27 future professional lives. This paper reports on a qualitative study of a learning intervention embedded in a lab series, aimed at developing first-year engineering students’ feedback literacy. The intervention consists of a short e-learning module, a one-hour workshop, and two peer feedback assignments. The design of this interventional study is based on the comparison of an experimental group with a control group. Both groups participated in focus group discussions after the intervention (n=55). Findings were complemented by data from reflection logs collected at the end of the semester describing students’ most important feedback experience (n=42). The results suggest that the learning intervention contributed to the understanding of the key concepts and principles of feedback literacy. Moreover, students in the intervention group appear to value their peers better and recognise their valuable contribution in the feedback process. Although students realise that easily applicable feedback, such as minor corrections, make a limited contribution to their learning, they still often prefer it because of the minimal time effort required. Based on the findings, the paper concludes with recommendations for both individual courses and entire programmes, such as encouraging reflection, and supporting students in storing and revisiting feedback

A situational judgement test for engineers to evaluate their professional strengths & weaknesses

This paper reports on the development and evaluation of a 23 item Situational Judgement Test (SJT) with scenarios tailored to the engineering profession. The SJT was developed around the PREFER model, with the support of professional engineers and academics in 11 panel discussions. In total 53 engineering professionals and academics were consulted during the development of both the item stems and the item responses of the SJT. Subsequently, the SJT was rolled out to 334 final year and masters students enrolled in engineering programmes at TU Dublin and KU Leuven respectively. After taking part in the test, students were sent automated reports on their performance and the test which highlighted how their response compared to a response gathered from a professional engineer with feedback on how they might improve their competence in a particular area, while also commending their performance in other areas. The results of this study highlight that 8 SJT items had significantly lower mean scores when compared with the test-mean. These items, which were related to perseverance, client focus, vision, planning and organising, solution orientation, team player, work organisation, clear communication and networking all represent potential competence deficits in the population of final year and master students that were tested. This work adds to engineering education scholarship by providing an engineering-specific SJT that enables educators to identify areas of relative strength and weakness in students’ professional judgements in order to better prepare them for their future careers