Underpinning systems thinking in railway engineering education

Abstract

Academics are by far more responsive to social, economic and technological changes and therefore academic identity must be resilient and flexible in order to fully engage with diverse and numerous purposes of academic institutions. Considering the fierce competition in the UK higher education sector, the demand for an academic curriculum to be globally relevant is greater than ever. In this paper, new challenges within the British higher education setting in globally competitive environment are discussed. The railway engineering curriculum within civil engineering programme at the University of Birmingham (accredited by the Institution of Civil Engineers, UK) is critically reviewed and evaluated, aiming at enhancing core technical skills alongside those required for systems thinking solutions. Comparative evaluations considering learning outcomes and industry expectation are carried out. Based on the review and evaluation using both academic and industry insights, some insights and recommendations to improve student experience and to enhance learning environment with the emphasis on employability, systems thinking approach and industry practice are highlighted.

Keywords:

• Railway engineering education
• student experience
• employability
• systems thinking
• research-led teaching

Acknowledgements

SK wishes to thank the Australian Academy of Science and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences for his Invitation Research Fellowship (Long-term) at the Railway Technical Research Institute and The University of Tokyo, Japan. The author also wish to gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the European Commission for H2020-MSCA-RISE Project No. 691135 ‘RISEN: Rail Infrastructure Systems Engineering Network’, which enables a global research network that tackles the grand challenges (Kaewunruen, Sussman, Matsumoto 2016) in railway infrastructure resilience and advanced sensing in extreme events (www.risen2rail.eu). The technical review and constructive comments by Drs Danielle Hinton and Marios Hadjianastasis are gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/civil-engineering/civil-engineering-railway-meng.aspx.