Engineering education in research-intensive universities

Abstract

The strengths and weaknesses of engineering education in research-intensive institutions are reported and key areas for developmental focus identified. The work is based on a questionnaire and session summaries used during a two-day international conference held at Imperial College London. The findings highlight several common concerns, such as the need to improve faculty motivation towards teaching, broaden the workplace skills of students, widen employer engagement in teaching and raise the relevance and value of scholarly activity in the discipline of engineering education. Examples of good practice used to address such issues are reported.

Keywords:

• research and teaching priorities
• faculty roles
• strengths and weaknesses of research-intensive universities

Acknowledgements

We would like to offer a grateful thanks to all the speakers (see Appendix 1). We are also most grateful to the postgraduate students from the Science Communication group at Imperial College London, who helped us with capturing the discussions. Thanks are also given to all the conference participants, who contributed actively and thoughtfully to the many discussions that helped to make the conference a success. The Gatsby Foundation, the National Higher Education STEM programme (UK), the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and BP all provided financial support for the meeting that was held in association with the Royal Academy of Engineering. The contributions of all these organisations are greatly appreciated.

Notes

www.kcl.ac.uk/study/learningteaching/kings/kwp-finalreport2010.pdf

www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p99puid181.html

See e.g. http://as.exeter.ac.uk/media/level1/academicserviceswebsite/ studentandstaffdevelopment/educationenhancement/pdfs/ Research-Led_Education_for_2012.pdf; www.bath.ac.uk/learningandteaching/resources/outcomes/researchandteaching; http://insight.glos.ac.uk/tli/resources/toolkit/resources/documents/linking rt handout website 20110216.doc

The collation of specific ‘real engineering’ practices from Theme 6 of the conference has been excluded from this analysis, but general topics that emerged from this are covered through the other theme summaries.