Addressing the learners' needs for specific and constructive feedback

This paper discusses an on-going project which proposes to make feedback to students more personal, explicit and more useful as a method of further engaging students. It addresses an issue that has recently been identified by the researchers where students on an Engineering programme were not recognising the presence of feedback on their assessed work. Feedback is central to the process of learning. However it has been widely accepted, through tools such as the UK National Student Survey, that students are still relatively dissatisfied with the feedback they have received. There is therefore a need to ensure that feedback given to students is specific and constructive in terms of helping them move their own learning forward. A pilot is being carried out with two Engineering classes, offering students the option to request specific feedback on their class tests. The students are asked to identify the areas of their work they require feedback on through the completion of a ‘feedback request label’. Staff can then respond to the feedback requests and issue students with personal and relevant feedback. Initial findings from the project have shown students to have clear expectations regarding the type of feedback they want. Students identified that they expect clear and legible feedback, which draws together feedback comments from throughout their work and provides a summary of how they could move forwards. Findings have also identified some differences in expectations and perceptions of feedback between the Level 3 and Level 4 students involved in the project

Staff and student perspectives on embedding sustainability into the engineering curriculum

Recognising that sustainability is an important concept within engineering this paper describes a project run by a team of academics which sought to investigate how engineering students viewed sustainability, what role they perceived it to hold in their work, and how they felt it should be incorporated into their education. Students and academics acted as equal stakeholders in the project with the students coming from a range of backgrounds including undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Mechanical Engineering, Product Design, Electrical Power Engineering and Multidisciplinary Design Innovation. The investigation sought to understand student and staff perceptions of how the university approached the concept of engineering education for sustainable development into the curricula. An additional aim of the research and activities of the project was to contribute to influencing how sustainability may contribute to engineering curriculum change within UK higher education. The activities conducted by the project team demonstrated that students and staff currently have an awareness, yet a limited understanding, of sustainability. Students strongly felt that sustainability was a key part of an engineer’s role and responsibilities. The findings recognized scope for concepts of sustainability to be more effectively included it in the curriculum for engineers adding many opportunities for imaginative pedagogies. It is proposed that students should also be encouraged to generate their own conceptions of sustainability and globalization and participate in discussions around these to ensure personal engagement with them. The project outcome generated valuable material which could support communication and dialogue about sustainability to support the education of global engineers

Initial findings of a mixed methods investigation into students’ perceptions and approaches towards learning

A Mixed Methods research methodology is suggested in this paper as a suitable model for the process of evaluating teaching and learning. The aim of this paper is to introduce some findings which have been obtained from research into teaching and learning within engineering at a UK Higher Education Institution. Students’ approaches, and the effects their perceptions have in determining their approaches to learning, have been explored. The data gathered highlighted some issues with regard to teaching and learning that are relevant to a range of courses and that can inform the quality enhancement of teaching provision. It is suggested that a mixed methods evaluation has advantages over standard institutional teaching and learning evaluations in allowing a greater understanding of the learning situations students encounter, how these situations are perceived, and how they affect students’ learning behaviour. Amongst the issues raised by the research is the notion that students have definite ideas, expectations and opinions about their learning contexts. The concept of importance emerged to show that students were identifying perceptions and approaches to learning based on their importance rating of a subject. Patterns in students’ questioning behaviour were also identified, highlighting possible limitations to students’ academic development within lectures

Do different learning contexts, processes and environment affect perceptions, dispositions and approaches to learning?

This paper is the initial report of an investigation into students' perception and approaches to learning as an extension to a Mixed Methods study. The initial study developed and applied a quantitative instrument within one institution, this study sought to deepen our knowledge through the deployment of the same instrument within a second institution delivering a mechanical engineering programme under similar circumstances. The results obtained through this quantitative stage show that for many questions the institutional context did not impact upon the student views which gives engineering academics a clear indication of where opportunities for enhancement of practice exist in relation to approaches to learning and studying, module and classes, ways of learning, and assessment in addition to student responses to material aspects such as student perceptions of staff and university resources. The paper details the methodology and quantitative instrument which will enable wider application in further contexts or the employment of the findings within a further and deeper qualitative investigation

Valuing diversity and establishing an approach to supporting excluded groups

Minority students and minority employees in Higher Engineering Education experience inequality. For academic staff these inequalities impact their personal development and career progression. To continue to grow and for engineering education to thrive as a professional discipline we must encourage diversity within both the student and staff populations. This paper cautions against a simple notion of diversity, rather a truly diverse culture within engineering is needed, one in which there is diversity of opportunity, diversity of thought and diversity of experience. To enable a more inclusive environment to flourish we must understand the scale of the inequalities which exist. However, this paper demonstrates that there are significant limitations to the current diversity data within the UK which leaves room for under-reporting and over-generalising. In addition, there are cultural challenges which give further likelihood to non-disclosure and lack of self-reporting. This paper proposes that further research is needed into the true lack of diversity within engineering and describes one example of a ‘thought experiment’ conducted by the researchers to start unpacking the data and highlighting the scale of the issue

Engineering Education Research - the UK perspective at a time of change

Engineering education in the United Kingdom is at the point of embarking upon an interesting journey into uncharted waters. At no point in the past have there been so many drivers for change and so many opportunities for the development of engineering pedagogy. This paper will look at how Engineering Education Research (EER) has developed within the UK and what differentiates it from the many small scale practitioner interventions, perhaps without a clear research question or with little evaluation, which are presented at numerous staff development sessions, workshops and conferences. From this position some examples of current projects will be described, outcomes of funding opportunities will be summarised and the benefits of collaboration with other disciplines illustrated

Expansion of the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) knowledge base and resources.

The Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)-a standardized vocabulary of phenotypic abnormalities associated with 7000+ diseases-is used by thousands of researchers, clinicians, informaticians and electronic health record systems around the world. Its detailed descriptions of clinical abnormalities and computable disease definitions have made HPO the de facto standard for deep phenotyping in the field of rare disease. The HPO\u27s interoperability with other ontologies has enabled it to be used to improve diagnostic accuracy by incorporating model organism data. It also plays a key role in the popular Exomiser tool, which identifies potential disease-causing variants from whole-exome or whole-genome sequencing data. Since the HPO was first introduced in 2008, its users have become both more numerous and more diverse. To meet these emerging needs, the project has added new content, language translations, mappings and computational tooling, as well as integrations with external community data. The HPO continues to collaborate with clinical adopters to improve specific areas of the ontology and extend standardized disease descriptions. The newly redesigned HPO website (www.human-phenotype-ontology.org) simplifies browsing terms and exploring clinical features, diseases, and human genes

Modelling of Flow and Heat Transfer in Spent Fuel Cooling Ponds

With increased interest in Nuclear power generation and the issues of storing legacy fuels being apparent there is a real need to understand the heat transfer mechanisms involved in storing spent fuel within water filled cooling ponds. This paper draws together the findings from several projects exploring the fundamental transport mechanisms in similar systems and, in particular, highlights the challenges encountered during numerical simulation. The projects from which conclusions were drawn are (a) Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) investigation of overall pond flow and heat transfer; (b) Modelling of evaporation from the pond and its interaction with external atmospheric conditions and (c) Investigation of possible overheating based on elementary thermodynamics

An exploratory investigation into the context specific perceptions and practices of second year mechanical engineering undergraduates

This thesis explores students’perceptions and practices within the context of a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate degree at a UK Higher Education institution. This engineering education research is situated in the pragmatic paradigm and is informed by a relational view of learning. The study explores the perceptions of students throughout the second year of their programme and also investigates their practices during the same time period. The research employs a mixed-methods exploratory methodology with data collection led by a dominant qualitative phase and followed by a quantitative phase. Data is integrated to present a holistic understanding of students’ perceptions and practices. The results demonstrate the importance for academia to consider students’ expectations and perceptions and to understand students’ actual practices. Analysis of the data has enabled the context to be defined from a student perspective; showing four key areas of context as being the staff-student relationships, students and student cultures, the teaching and assessment context, and the course contexts. The connection between students’perceptions and their practices is clearly established in the data. The integrated findings highlight the complexities involved for students in carrying out the practice of learning in a complex environment alongside their own perceptions of the discipline, the programme, their peers and staff. Combining the two data types has enabled the significance of perceptions to be highlighted, the vast elements of context to be demonstrated and finally recommendations to be produced to inform the design and execution of engineering education. Specific attention is drawn to findings which suggest further explanatory work is required to explore aspects such as; students’perceptions of importance, their participation in informal peer working, the distinction between procedural and conceptual learning for the discipline and the expectation of professionalism that students hold