Europe needs more engineers and more importantly, more innovative engineers to meet the challenges that the world is facing in the coming decades. In many European countries the number of engineering students has decreased over the past ten years and studies indicate that the younger generation does not find engineering attractive and cannot identify themselves with the values that are embedded in engineering knowledge and its culture. On the contrary: many young people find that engineering can be regarded as something rather narrow minded and boring and far from their view of life.
Qualified academically trained professionals with backgrounds in science, technology or engineering are essential to our society. They are needed to develop new products and services and to bring about scientific and social change and to ensure innovation. There is an urgent need for new innovative solutions to many of the environmental challenges faced by mankind both globally and regionally – and new innovative sustainable solutions are a precondition for the continuation of current welfare systems.
Thus the decreasing number of European students entering engineering and science disciplines in an ageing Europe is of great concern to SEFI. This leads us to the following questions: What current initiatives are being undertaken to make engineering more attractive to the younger generations? What are the attitudes among young people towards technology and science? How can we develop the engineering curriculum in order to attract more students? How do we attract more women into engineering? How can we increase the retention rate among the students who begin an engineering education? Can adding social context and ethics into the curriculum address the values held by the younger generation?
These and many more questions were discussed at the 37th Annual SEFI Conference in July 2009 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The theme of the conference was: Attracting Young People to Engineering: Engineering is Fun! The main message of the conference was that engineering is not a boring narrow minded field, but a playground for creative thinking and a creative working environment. Working in teams is crucial in engineering practice – as is the use of entrepreneurial skills in order to participate in the shaping of the future. Context and the integration of the people who are using technology is a very important element in the innovation process as well as the consideration of ethical implications. Showing the involvement and engagement in the innovation processes are the drivers for creating a more adequate and modern picture of engineering today.
A best paper award competition was launched as a new initiative at the SEFI Annual Conference. The best papers from the conference are published in this thematic issue. An awards committee consisting of Prof. Dr. A. Kolmos, Prof. Dr. S. Bohrmann and M.E.D. van den Bogaard MSc, selected the 12 best papers out of the 157 submissions. The committee decided to define Best Conference Paper Awards in three categories: Innovative Practice, Research and Reflection on Practice and finally Research in Engineering Education. In this thematic issue ten of these papers are published. These papers represent a wealth of ideas on how to change engineering education to attract more young people. Please allow us to briefly introduce you to each of the authors.
Frank Becker starts by explaining “Why don't young people want to become engineers? Rational reasons for disappointing decisions.” One of his findings is that young people do not choose engineering because of the career perspective which do not seem to be attractive enough compared to other comparable choices.
David Delaine and his colleagues at SPEED emphasise the importance of student involvement in their paper: Student Involvement as a Vehicle for Empowerment: A Case Study of the Student Platform for Engineering Education Development.
In this paper, the authors discuss the mission, structure and outputs of a student organization, SPEED, as a case study for how student-led organizations use student involvement to promote and sustain student self-efficacy. This active involvement is seen as a methodology for creating more commitment and motivation for students in their learning process.
Zorica Nedic, Jan Machotka and Andrew Nafalski also write about motivation. In their article “Motivational project-based laboratory for a common 1st year electrical engineering course”, they analyse learning gains and processes from project based laboratory work for 1st year students enrolled in electrical disciplines. The results include increased student satisfaction, a reduced student attrition rate and improved student success rates.
Pia Lappalainen writes about how to train students in soft skills that are pertinent for students to be successful in their careers. In her paper on “Integrated language education - a means of enhancing engineers’ social competences.” she shares her research on what competences students and companies find important and how these needs can be met in a comprehensive curriculum that is now in place at Helsinki University of Technology.
Several of the articles address the implementations of various ICT resources in engineering education as means to attract more students and improve students’ learning.
Nicole Natho, Lars Knipping, Olivier Pfeiffer, Christian Schröder, Erhard Zorn and Sabina Jeschke discuss in “Collaborative Learning in Teaching Information Management” the use of OneNote and Tablet PCs in a first year lecture on information management where the student had to learn to collaborate in virtual system. The paper shows blended learning lectures can play a role in increasing students'motivation and their future academic success.
Esat Alpay and Shelly Gulati write in their article titled: “Student-led Podcasting for engineering education” about the use of an innovative podcasting approach in which there is a strong student-centred and student-led premise to foster and advance engineering education related uses. Evaluation of the case indicates favourable outcomes in skills development, community identity and broader educational awareness.
Anne Gardner and Keith Willey share their experiences of using an online tool for peer and self assessment called SPARK in their paper “Investigating the capacity of self and peer assessment activities to engage students and promote learning”. The use of peer assessment is often reduced to reduce the risk of free-riding in team work. However, peer and self assessment can also play a vital role in student engagement in learning. The authors also investigate the added value of SPARK Plus as a tool to achieve increased student engagement in the subject matter.
Gender is also a very important factor in the recruitment discussions. Isabel Zorn and Anita Thaler work with music in the article: “Innovative themes for technology education – Music and gender equality”, “Engineer Your Sound!” is a research project aimed at exploring whether interdisciplinary, innovative teaching/learning settings in the field of music technology can be used to give pupils opportunities to experiment and discover their technical potentials, skills, interests, and talents and to present the field of technology and digital media as appealing. The results of the analysis explain how music technology can serve as a suitable theme with potential to increase interest in science and technology among both males and females.
Deborah Tully and Betty Jacobs write about: Effects of single-gender mathematics classrooms on self-perception of mathematical ability and post secondary engineering paths: an Australian case study. The research question in this paper is: Do unique opportunities exist in an all-female secondary school mathematics classroom which impact a young woman's self-perception of her mathematics ability as well as promote a positive path towards an engineering based university major? Using both qualitative and quantitative data collection instruments, this study shows that 40% of the women engineering students attended a single-gender secondary school and women's motivation for choosing engineering is based on math skills whereas men's motivation is more based on the experience with engineering practice.
Recruitment and attractiveness do not only encompass the younger generation, it also encompasses life-long learning and more specifically in this case the recognition of work experiences. Deborah Seddon and Richard Shearman address this issue in the article: Challenges for academic accreditation: the UK experience. Work-based learning is increasingly found in first and second cycle programmes, along with modules designed by employers and the increased use of distance learning. In this paper the authors explore how this system deals with the new challenges and points at issues which will have to be addressed to ensure that the system can cope effectively with these new changes.
All the articles have gone through additional peer review prior to publishing and we would like to thank the reviewers for their support to help disseminate these papers further. We would also like to thank the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Engineering Education, Dr. Erik de Graaff for giving us the opportunity to publish these papers in this special issue of the EJEE. Finally, we would also like to thank Dr. Steffen Bohrmann for his work for the Best Conference Paper Awards committee.
We hope you enjoy these papers and gain new insights and ideas from them. After all, engineering education is fun!
The editors.