Industrial product design project: building up engineering students’ career prospects

ABSTRACT

The needs to bridge the academic skills of students involved in higher education and improve their readiness for employment in industry are being widely addressed. Most academic curricula cover the natural, technical and scientific topics of engineering in depth but lack practical engineering experience and soft skill development crucial for a successful engineering career. A novel national tender-based programme has been launched to provide students with industrial-grade experience during studies through direct cooperation between students, university staff and the industry. This paper presents results of a specific engineering project case supervised by the authors. Within the project, students got an opportunity to practice engineering skills without sacrificing the time needed for a company-based internship. During a 6-month project, a group of interdisciplinary students designed an instrument as specified by the industrial project partner. Participation in the project was optional and organised as a student’s side activity. The project was stimulating development of a range of engineering competences and soft skills among the participants. The participating students showed an above-average commitment and responsibility, fulfilling the specified project goals. The indirect measures demonstrate the positive influence of participating in the project on the career futures of the students.

KEYWORDS:

• Project based learning
• experiential learning
• industrial training
• electrical engineering
• career futures inventory

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for financial support provided by the Public Scholarship, Development, Disability and Maintenance Fund of the Republic of Slovenia, which made the project possible. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their institutions. We would also like to acknowledge the students who participated in this study. In addition, we express gratitude to employees of Red Pitaya company for their time and helpful discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Urban Burnik http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8652-4977

Andrej Košir http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6938-221X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Public Scholarship, Development, Disability and Maintenance Fund of the Republic of Slovenia [grant number PKP2013].