Assessment of work-based reports: an analysis of assessment frameworks

In Britain engineering professional development has traditionally been seen as a three phase process consisting of a period of engineering formation, a period of training and a period during which engineering responsibilities are demonstrated. An individual could submit evidence of these activities and become registered as a Professional Engineer. Increasing numbers of people employed in the role of engineer do not have formal engineering qualifications and a part or all their engineering formation is carried out within engineering companies or organizations. These people therefore do not have the academically authenticated credentials to register as professional engineers but if they are ignored then the pool of registered engineers will cease to be representative of the profession. The Engineering Council, the body responsible for registering engineers in the UK, has acknowledged the changes in the structure of the profession and has introduced an alternative route for assessing the knowledge and understanding that underpins the competence of a professional engineer. Individual engineers can demonstrate that they have an adequate engineering formation through any combination of academic qualifications and a technical report on some aspect of their professional engineering work. The introduction of the technical report requires the Professional Engineering Bodies to carry out an assessment outside the traditional assessment framework of the Universities. This paper reviews and analyses the requirements of assessment systems and derives the components of such a system that will ensure that the results of the assessment of a work-based technical report will be respected and be seen as assuring comparable standards to the academic routes to engineering formation. By examining assessment separately from the processes of teaching and learning, the paper also reveals the extent of an assessment process and its costs

Working in the dark

Professional engineers work as experts who influence the work of others. They rarely have direct contact with the products of an enterprise. They work with analogues such as graphs, algorithms and simulations, and engage in discussions in specialized languages, which develop alongside the technological changes they promote or oppose. The engines of linguistic development are metaphors and analogies, however there is no system for creating them. Some metaphors and analogies become so familiar that they are treated as literal terms or literal explanations and become embedded in engineering language games. The field of electrical engineering offers hosts of examples. Students wishing to practice in engineering will need to become fluent in the language games of the profession. The haphazard evolution of language games offer students little help. As with acquisition of any language, repeated rehearsal is vital and practice in playing specialised language games is a primary part of engineering education

Skills in Ethics for Engineers

A script of a lecture giving examples of everyday ethical statements made in an engineering context, making a link with the views of the ethicist G.E. Moore and a conclusion about the skills that engineers might acquire to partcipate in ethical debate

Plato, the designers and engineers

The products or services that designers and engineers influence as part of their professional work represent their views. People can elect to adopt their service or product and thus identify themselves with particular designers or engineers provided there is a choice. Designers can be adventurous but to be successful must identify themselves with the constituency in which they hope that their product will become the popular choice. They must also, if they wish to be assimilated into a democratic movement, be willing to paint a picture of the identity that they are striving for. In doing so they will become representatives of their designs and be helping to socialise the non-humans that they value. To participate in democracy, designers and engineers will have to take lessons from Plato's Gorgias and tell their stories in the most compelling way they can. They must design their products, too, so that they can stand as eloquent representatives

Ceremonies and Models

A model is an artefact used by a group of specialists that inspires a conversation composed of specialised linguistic practices. From their use of their model, specialists will claim to make new, reliable predictions or explanations about some other artefact. While those outside the specialism may be at sea with the explanations, those inside the specialism identify themselves by showing satisfaction. Members of the group use the models because they find the ensuing discussions satisfying. The use of specialist language, by an identifiable group which imputes to objects the group's own special meanings and whose members engage in activities that give them satisfaction turns their activity, the use of the model, into a ceremony

Technology Games

Technology games are parts of ways of life. The rules of technology games are the customary restrained practices people engage in, in consort with artefacts. Artefacts are not media shaping themselves more closely around human needs but are active participants in technology games which constitute nations, genders, professions and so on. Gradually, the technological ecology changes and consequently self-images change. Engineering is itself a technology game that attempts to turn visions of other technology games into a material form. Engineers are thus cultural leaders who regulate self-images through innovations in artefacts and proposed rules for their use

Re G (Children) (Residence: Same-Sex Partner)

From book synopsis: While feminist legal scholarship has thrived within universities and in some sectors of legal practice, it has yet to have much impact within the judiciary or on judicial thinking. Thus, while feminist legal scholarship has generated comprehensive critiques of existing legal doctrine, there has been little opportunity to test or apply feminist knowledge in practice, in decisions in individual cases. In this book, a group of feminist legal scholars put theory into practice in judgment form, by writing the 'missing' feminist judgments in key cases. The cases chosen are significant decisions in English law across a broad range of substantive areas. The cases originate from a variety of levels but are primarily opinions of the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords. In some instances they are written in a fictitious appeal, but in others they are written as an additional concurring or dissenting judgment in the original case, providing a powerful illustration of the way in which the case could have been decided differently, even at the time it was heard. Each case is accompanied by a commentary which renders the judgment accessible to a non-specialist audience. The commentary explains the original decision, its background and doctrinal significance, the issues it raises, and how the feminist judgment deals with them differently. The books also includes chapters examining the theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the process and practice of feminist judging, and by the judgments themselves, including the possibility of divergent feminist approaches to legal decision-making

Components for oversampled signal processors

Oversampled converters trade transmission bandwidth for resolution. An idealized model gives an insight into the way in which signals are encoded and thus how they can be manipulated. Oversampling offers a form of signal processing that requires simple processing elements capable of exploiting the growing clock speeds available in integrated solutions. Simultaneously avoids the need for analog circuitry. This paper reviews common operations that can be performed on oversampled signals

Life without theory: biography as an exemplar of philosophical understanding

This article discusses recent attempts to provide the genre of biography with a philosophical, theoretical foundation and attempts to show that such efforts are fundamentally misguided. Biography is, I argue, a profoundly nontheoretical activity, and this, precisely, makes it philosophically interesting. Instead of looking to philosophy to provide a theory of biography, we should, I maintain, look to biography to provide a crucially important example and model of what Ludwig Wittgenstein called "the kind of understanding that consists in seeing connections." This kind of understanding stands in sharp contrast to the theoretical understanding provided by science and is, Wittgenstein maintained, what we as philosophers are, or should be, striving for

Emotion, engineering and ethics

Adopting Martha Nussbaum's view provides grounds for recognizing those bursts of anger or delight and the responses to them that alter the course of development of engineering projects. Her case supports the view that our emotions offer authentic thoughts about authentic situations, and by ignoring emotions engineering judgments are liable to be deficient. At worst, without reflection an emotion hides an influential unarticulated and mistaken belief. But at best an emotion can be taken to be an indicator of relevant components of ethical arguments supporting an engineering project and the significance attributed to them. So we might expect virtuous engineers to be aware of their emotions, of ways in which they exploit the emotions of others, to reflect on those emotions and to use the knowledge gained in their judgments. To be effective within this emotional soup they will have to be self-aware, articulate,persuasive and above all empathetic