Articulating learning activities for design between university and the workplace. A didactic analysis

Abstract

This paper accounts for research looking at the following question: in what way can university-located training activities be articulated with those in companies for work-based engineering students? Here, we will present an overview of research about both training periods, i.e. in the companies and at university. We focus on the trainee's actual activities and written work from a didactic point of view, a perspective which has been rarely mentioned in previous studies about work-based training in engineering. We aim to describe the activities of trainee engineers during industrial and academic training. Training activities in design engineering will be analysed in terms of knowledge acquisition and how this knowledge is put into practice during the two parts of the training. In doing so, we will obtain a better picture of what trainees, trainers and tutors really do.

Keywords:

• didactic analysis
• engineers
• knowledge
• work-based training

Notes

This figure should be put into perspective as the number of engineering diplomas obtained in work-based training represents only 8% of the overall number of diplomas awarded every year in France.

This point of view focuses on the dynamics of teaching and learning of a specific domain or content (Loewenberg and Forzani 2007; Reuter 2007a, 2007b). The dynamic that is being considered here has grounds beyond the frontiers of school itself and is not directly related to one discipline in the academic sense.

These two types of written report correspond to two types of training: work placement reports are written by trainees in mechanical design engineering, while logbooks are completed by engineer trainees in mechatronics.

In French, couvercle d'arbre intermédiaire (CAI).

Which itself includes several phases: analysis of the needs, characterisation of service functions, Functional Analysis System Technique or FAST, study of relative dispositions of the components of a technical system (this is an introductory stage for functional dimensioning and affectation of dimensional, geometrical or varying-shape specifications to components).

An artificial object built for some use (Lebahar 1998) and which materialises a solution to a range of socially posed problems (Rabardel 1995).

Aerofoil design (1908–1945); specifications linked to flying planes’ manoeuvrability (1918–1943); analysis in terms of control volume (1912–1953); propeller trials (1916–1926); innovation of the flush riveting in aircraft manufacturing (1930–1950).

The actions, which are oriented towards an objective, are produced by individuals or groups of individuals proceeding in an activity (Tuomi-Grohn and Engestôm 2003). If the objective is situation-specific, the motive of the activity can arise in a different situation.

The orientation operations are those which operate the specific conditions of the action, the identification of the properties of the object of the action and the matching up of these conditions and properties with the execution and control operations; the execution operations take care of the effective transformations of the object of the action; the control operations are those which ensure the observation and assessment of the development of the action.

Logbooks were designed following the categories in Table 1. They were proposed as a way to support the articulation of the training contents (14 students, mechatronics engineering).

Reports completed by students (17 students, mechanical engineers) filmed during academic training.

Four heads of the Engineering Department and one Assistant Director of Training in different companies: Bosch, Matra, Renault Trucks, Renault Technocentre and CEA of Saclay.

In some parts of the footage, discussions cannot be perceived properly, trainees move towards the camera for discussions or diverse actions, etc. We regarded those periods as non-exploitable.

Using models to calculate the cutting force and representing behaviour of the machined part with extensometric gauges.

The original French answer was the following: ‘Si le gars est super concepteur dans sa console … et qui n'a aucun sens relationnel j'en veux pas, j'en veux pas. On a eu des gens dans le bureau d’étude qui sont très forts en CAO, mais incapable de discuter avec leurs voisins. Il faut une messagerie pour discuter avec son chef de service.’

‘Le planning complet du projet, toute l'industrialisation, à savoir la conception, la mise en application, l'industrialisation, le suivi des coûts …etc. tout est sous la responsabilité du responsable d’étude.’

For example, the LHC sub-category appears 150 times in the 17 work placement reports that were analysed, which amounts to approximately 10% of the occurrences of all categories (1474).

‘Il y a eu quelques problèmes de compréhension au niveau tout bêtement des phrases utilisées quoi, des fois on n'a pas compris tout ce qu'il fallait faire. Même dans les réunions il y avait un certain flou, je n'ai pas compris quel était le but, il y en a un, je ne dis pas que ce n’était pas bien, je dis que je n'ai pas compris où est- ce qu'on voulait en venir.’

‘Ah oui, je trouve qu'on parle d'abord de la tâche à réaliser après on parle de l'entreprise. Ça me paraît comme une coupure dans … je ne sais pas si c'est moi qui doit arranger le truc.’

BTS and IUT: French acronyms for Brevet de Technicien Supérieur (advanced technician diploma) and Institut Universitaire de Technologie (university institute of technology).

‘La difficulté c’était l'adaptation du carnet à la situation du laboratoire. Le carnet est construit sur l'idée du produit industriel. Moi j'ai l'aspect démarche, la performance et les défaillances (de la démarche) ça se présente moins bien.’

‘L'adaptation à ma propre tâche effectivement, puisque je travaille sur un ensemble de recherches, tu parles de produits de production, j’étais un peu coincé … Quand même un actionneur est un produit industriel, mais le carnet est très orienté produit industriel …’

‘… pour la mise en forme on va dire oui par ce que ça m'a permis de poser des questions par rapport à l'entreprise que je n'aurais pas vues toute seule et que j'ai pu voir grâce au carnet.’

To conceptualise the learning transfer between university and work and to reflect on the interactions between the two activity systems, the university and the firm, following his own expansive learning theory, Engeström (1999) proposes the notion of boundary-crossing objects: ‘The notion of a boundary object addresses how artefacts or objects can mediate interaction between agents from different communities of practice’ (Ludvigsen et al. 2003, 293).

This tool refers to the ‘tétraède de Cartonnet (2002)’, which has been re-named here the ‘Tâche-Savoir’ tool and redefined in order to highlight that the types of knowledge are without meaning outside the framework of the specific conception activity.