Barriers to student success in engineering education

ABSTRACT

In the UK, the USA and Australia, there have been calls for an increase in the number of engineering graduates to meet the needs of current global challenges. Universities around the world have been grappling with how to both attract more engineering students and to then retain them. Attrition from engineering programmes is disturbingly high. This paper reports on an element of research undertaken through an Australian Learning and Teaching Council-funded Fellowship that investigated the factors leading to student attrition in engineering programmes, by identifying barriers to student success. Here, we contrast a review of the literature related to student barriers and success with student perceptions, gathered through a series of focus groups and interviews at three Australian universities. We also present recommendations for action to try to remove barriers to student success.

KEYWORDS:

• Retention
• attrition
• student success
• learning environment
• barriers to learning
• engineering education

Notes on contributors

Wageeh Boles is Professor at the Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. He is currently the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science School Director, Learning and Teaching. He has published widely on image processing and engineering education. He has received many excellence awards in teaching and leadership, including two ALTC National Teaching Fellowships from Australia.

Karen Whelan is Assistant Dean, Learning and Teaching, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. Her research interests have spanned engineering education, equity and diversity in higher education and academic development for early career academics. She is responsible for academic leadership of learning and teaching in the Science and Engineering Faculty.

Notes

1. ALTC has been superseded by the Office for Learning and Teaching, OLT (http://www.olt.gov.au/)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Senior National Teaching Fellowship (under ALTC).