For academics and students in the United Kingdom the main source of standards is via British Standards Institution (BSI). The research demonstrates that British, European and International Standards play a key role in many areas of education. In some disciplines their inclusion in the course is mandatory, e.g. in building construction and performing risk assessments of equipment. Where not a requirement, other courses successfully encourage students to understand and apply specific standards and principles from them, to their design and project work, in topic areas such as quality management and user-computer interface design. Assessment practice is a key part of learning and academics have indicated how this fitted into the learning activity, e.g. by expecting students to develop an understanding of standards and reference them in all assessed work.
Likewise, students taking part in the survey also suggest that they were actively engaged with one or more standards and that their understanding was measured through an assessed activity. However, students also emphasised the importance of additional support, e.g. introduction to standards in the workplace or as part of work placements, by library staff as an information resource, and by presentations from BSI experts.
Employers have also indicated the importance of students’ knowledge, understanding and appreciation of relevant standards in the right context, emphasising their desire for standards to be included more widely in the curriculum.
The draft recommendations from this study were subject to International review and comment, the results from this review served to strengthen the recommendations of this work.
This research was commissioned by British Standards Institution (BSI).
This research was produced in association with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as part of its ongoing programme of support for standardization.
Grateful thanks are due to all those who filled in the questionnaire or who attended the workshops
