Engineering students’ perceptions for engineers and engineering work

Background: Engineering is well ahead of many other disciplines in terms of establishing strong and evidence-based research and practice relating to employability. Despite this, there are high rates of student and graduate attrition in many countries. One possible reason for this is that students enter engineering study without a sense of motivation and commitment, and without understanding the realities of either their degree program or engineering work. Purpose: Educational institutions provide the learning foundation upon which competence for a professional engineering career is established; however, understanding how students position learning in relation to their future careers is a neglected area of research. Working with engineering students in their first semester of study, this research aimed to extend current understanding of students’ thinking about competencies, identity, self-efficacy, motivation, career preview, and both career aspirations and fears.Study Design: Twelve hundred first-year engineering students at an Australian university participated in in-class workshops in which they considered their future lives and work. Responses were coded using the Engineers Australia (EA) graduate competencies as a framework. In this paper we report findings from the first cohort of students (n=260), of whom 49% were international students with English as their second language. Results: Students most frequently characterised engineers in line with the EA competency Professional and Personal Attributes. Striking differences emerged between international and local (domestic) students’ perceptions of difference between the characteristics of engineers and their own attributes. These extended to Engineering Application Ability, Knowledge and Skill Base, and characteristics of engineers that are not EA competencies. Conclusions: Implications for engineering education include changes to the information that guides course and career choice; the role and impact of foundation-year, including career-oriented learning; and the structure and delivery of pedagogical approaches that explore engineering identity. In considering these implications, language and cultural diversity warrant further attention

The Engineering Pavilion – a learning space developing engineers for the global community

Of the many factors, formal and informal, that facilitate engineering students’ skills development and engineering identity, interactions with fellow students, teachers and industry are key. The Engineering Pavilion at Curtin facilitates these interactions in a building dedicated to students, providing a ‘home’ throughout their studies, a base for industry to engage with students, and stimulating concept understanding in a live (instrumented) building and learning space.To understand how students develop their learning, experience and behavior in this space, we need to understand the culture of the Pavilion. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and the key concept of habitus, allow us to operationalize the concept of culture and understand the shifting mixtures of values and beliefs that underlie behavior. An ethnographic approach, studying a culture-shaping group at a single site, was employed.The Pavilion, recently opened, already supports student interactions. In moving from a habitus of student to graduate engineer, students’ perceptions and behavior are influenced by these interactions. The larger field of engineering education also changes through adoption or revaluing new forms of behavior through the curriculum. The Pavilion hosts the development of changing habitus and exemplifies how innovative learning spaces can influence the norms of long-established disciplines

Modelling of gibbsite calcination in a fluidized bed reactor

A steady state, non‐isothermal fluidized bed reactor model for co‐current flow of gas and solids has been developed as a series of Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR) compartments. For each CSTR compartment, mass and energy balances were coupled with a particle‐scale gibbsite calcination kinetic model previously developed by the authors. The overall solids residence time distribution is captured by the compartment calcination model. The multi‐scale model was solved numerically through an iterative procedure that alternated between solving particle‐scale and reactor‐scale parts of the model. Gas, water vapour and solids concentrations, as well as particle and gas temperatures and gibbsite conversion profiles, are predicted inside the calcination reactor. The developed model can be used to facilitate improvements in the operation and design of industrial‐scale reactors

Multi-stage shrinking core model for thermal decomposition reactions with a self-inhibiting nature

Among the variety of thermal decomposition reactions, some display self-inhibiting behaviour, where the produced gas negatively influences the reaction progress. Further, a build-up of internal pressure caused by the product gas may alter the reaction pathway over the reaction duration in a way that favours a particular pathway over others. Two well-known cases of this kind of reaction are the thermal decomposition of limestone and gibbsite, in which carbon dioxide and water vapour are the produced gases, respectively. A multi-stage, multi-reaction, shrinking core model is proposed for this type of reaction. The model emphasises the role of the produced gas, not only in the mass transfer rate, but also in the reaction kinetics. It also includes parallel and series reaction pathways, which allows for the presence of an intermediate species. The model has been applied to the conversion of gibbsite to alumina, and it includes the formation of boehmite as an intermediate product. The model results are in good agreement with experimental data for gibbsite calcination reported in the literature. Gibbsite conversion, boehmite formation and subsequent consumption, as well as alumina formation, are successfully simulated. Further, the corresponding kinetic parameters are estimated for all reactions of interest

USING MAKERSPACES TO FOSTER AUTHENTIC STEM ENGAGEMENT

Problem Research in primary education has demonstrated a reluctance of teachers to engage with STEM subjects, and a lack of confidence in teaching mathematics and science (Hackling, Murcia, West, & Anderson, 2014). In addition there is evidence indicating that females do not engage in STEM activities in the same numbers as their male counterparts (National Research Council, 2011; US Department of Commerce, 2013). In the Bachelor of Education (Primary) at Curtin degree over 85% of the students are female (Blackley & Sheffield, 2015), and many demonstrate a deficit of skills, knowledge and confidence in STEM education. These attitudes and under-developed skills translate into the classroom, resulting in a cycle of poor STEM engagement. In pre-service teacher education courses STEM subjects are usually taught in individual units – although the E for Engineering is not addressed at all. This project focused on scaffolding females to work together in STEM education by accessing and engaging with a STEM Makerspace that had a physical (Engineering Pavilion) and a virtual location (closed Facebook site). Plan The methodology for this project was interpretivist qualitative research, based on an exploratory case study to examine participant engagement with and reflections on Makerspace STEM projects. The research was carried out at two sites: one Western Australian independent Catholic girls’ school and on the Curtin University campus in the physical and virtual STEM Makerspace. This project cycled through three iterations of the Reflective Model of Professional Learning (Blackley & Sheffield, 2016), and had two distinct phases: Phase 1: Learning-by-doing: create, make, and refine the STEM Makerspace projects, and Phase 2: Learning-by doing: making in the primary school that saw the implementation of the STEM Makerspace projects at a school site. Actions 1. STEM Makerspace Community of Practice (CoP) The students and project team staff from the School of Education and Engineering and Science formed a STEM CoP and decided upon the design of the STEM Makerspace physical and digital presence. 2. Development of a suite of 3 STEM Makerspace projects Each STEM Makerspace project had a specific science and engineering focus, and the STEM CoP developed resources to support the dissemination of each project in schools. Each STEM project was conceptualised, designed, created, tested, refined, and finally released at intervals during the year of the project, as determined by the STEM CoP’s availability. The education and engineering students in the STEM CoP were scaffolded to implement the projects in primary classrooms, including the creation of a question bank and strategies to encourage the school children to investigate and create their personalised project. 3. Data Collection CoP members’ reflections and interview response were collected over the year, as were school girl participants’ survey responses. The posts on Makerspace Facebook site were collected as Word documents. Reflection The implementation of the STEM Makerspace project in school classrooms provided the PSTs with additional opportunities to gain structured workplace experience. For ESs provided the opportunity for outreach to the community, which is a component of their industry standards, and to be role models for female students in primary schools. Proceedings of the Australian Conference on Science and Mathematics Education, University of Queensland, Sept 28th to Sept 30th, 2016, page X, ISBN Number 978-0-9871834-4-6

Informal academic networks and the value of significant social interactions in supporting quality assessment practices

This research investigated social interactions within small significant networks across a range of higher education settings to determine their role in supporting improvements to assessment. Thirty-four academic staff from three higher education settings (Australia, Canada and Sweden) provided assessment change examples and drew network diagrams to explain their interactions. Significant social interactions were defined as engaged exchanges between people who trust and respect each other, around topics that hold common value. They led to an emotional response, promoted reflection and resulted in action and/or a shift in thinking. Significant social interactions were demonstrated to be effective in supporting changes in assessment practices. The qualitative findings were supplemented with quantitative investigation of the relational ties within the networks. The most significant relational ties related to changes in the assessment were the value of the interactions (d =.64) and the similarity between individuals (d =.50). Authors recommend that leaders in higher education heed lessons learned about how value was generated within networks and utilized for improvement activities. It is suggested that the following positive change-oriented behaviours be developed and actively encouraged: Building of diverse networks; appreciating reciprocity; forging trust; creation of time and space for significant social interactions; and external recognition of the shift toward quality assessment practices. This study builds on existing literature for improving teaching and assessment in higher education, and particularly highlights the benefits of informal academic networks and the potential for significant interactions as a mechanism for change toward a quality agenda