Welcome to Volume 8, Issue 2 of Engineering Education, a journal of The Higher Education Academy. In this issue a number of papers on systems and control are included. These are associated with the conference ACE 2013 (Advances in Control Education) hosted at the University of Sheffield in August 2013. The papers are by Mitchell, Rossiter, and Shakouri et al. There will be further papers under this theme to follow (published via Articles ASAP and compiled into the next issue).
Systems and control are included in many engineering programmes and consequently the underlying messages of the papers are relevant to all disciplines. However, it is also recognised that control is a topic many students find hard, and thus good ideas on how to ameliorate this are always welcome. The same control module may be taught to several different cohorts which means large classes, with the potential for economies of scale but also challenges when it comes to assessment and laboratory activities. There has always been a feeling in engineering that delivering material in context helps students appreciate relevance. By delivering control in context, departments can achieve their core accreditation requirements while keeping students engaged and motivated. One aspect of particular contextual relevance is access to laboratories. Some control and systems engineering lecturers are leading the way internationally in opening up laboratories outside normal class hours, allowing students to apply their learning on real hardware more freely. In a similar vein challenges involving small robots are highly effective and popular with students.
The other papers in this issue provide rich variety: Evans on enhancing teaching and feedback using social media; Hughes et al. on learning from experiments inspired by Michael Faraday’s The Chemical History of a Candle; Lashari et al. on enhancing student engagement; and Meldrum on using online testing.
As well as giving access to content for this issue, the website, journals.heacademy.ac.uk, gives access to full content for all previous issues. It also features ‘Articles ASAP’ which facilitates early publication online; as soon as an accepted article has been processed for publication, it is published and citable.
If you would like to publish in future issues please go to the website. Submissions are now being managed using ScholarOne Manuscripts™.