Abstract
Engineering programmes within higher education have significant scope to make a contribution to global challenges such as sustainable development and solutions to world poverty. Alongside such a contribution to society, universities are also exploring ways to focus student learning around realistic enquiries. It is therefore important to explore approaches that address such challenges and pedagogies, which indeed also offer a way forward in attracting and motivating students, and in preparing them for suitable careers.
We report here on an evaluation of a student-based engineering design service for development organisations, involving a partnership between a charity, a university and development professionals. The service involves teams of undergraduate students designing, making and testing intermediate technologies. The paper explores a model based around enquiry-based learning, and draws on a set of naturally-occurring reflective accounts provided by the students involved.
While learning about technical issues was important, the study shows how a realistic developing-world context motivated student work, enhancing students’ confidence and readiness to make a difference. Various technical issues emerged with scope to hamper the educational experience, as did the challenge of ensuring fairness across different enquiries. Strategies are proposed to manage rather than ignore or reduce such variation, an issue which has received relatively little attention hitherto in relation to project work or enquiry-based learning.
Introduction
Two of the biggest global challenges facing society today concern sustainable development and world poverty. It is widely recognised that engineering disciplines within higher education have an important role to play in any response to these challenges in developing capacity for low-cost sustainable solutions to a range of real-world problems and promoting solutions to global poverty. As yet, however, such potential within universities remains relatively untapped globally.
Global concerns also present key motivating factors for the study of engineering. Indeed, a recent submission by the CitationRoyal Academy of Engineering (2006) highlights the desire to make a contribution to society as a key factor in students’ choice to study engineering. One recent study (CitationHokanson et al., 2007) further suggests that under-represented groups in engineering, particularly women, may be attracted to careers which they sense offer scope to have a positive impact on society. Meanwhile, a recent report by the CitationHenley Management College (2006) reports the numbers of students opting for engineering courses in the UK in the 10 years up to 2004 remained static, with less than half the engineering cohort choosing to enter the engineering profession after graduating from college. A recent report from the Higher Education Funding Council for England similarly confirms the overall picture in identifying engineering as a subject to be targeted as ‘strategically important and vulnerable’ (CitationHEFCE, 2005), pointing also to a decline in the number of engineering students as a proportion of the higher education population. There thus remains a pressing need for undergraduate engineering education to address student motivation.
A focus on student enquiry may also be important in addressing such motivation, with a range of new pedagogies now centred on realistic student enquiries. We link here to project-based learning or capstone courses (CitationDutson et al., 1997), problem-based learning (CitationBoud and Feletti, 1991), and enquiry or inquiry based learning more broadly (CitationSavin-Baden, 2000). CitationKahn and O’Rourke (2005) in particular suggest that learning which allows groups of students to choose the topic and lines of enquiry fosters their engagement. We take a broad approach to this area, recognising along with CitationMills and Treagust (2003) that more open project-based approaches to an enquiry offer particular scope within an engineering context.
It is therefore important to explore lessons from approaches that explore such pedagogies and motivations, such as the partnership initiated during 2001 between the charity Developing Technologies and Imperial College London. This partnership now jointly provides a student-based engineering design service for development organisations. It relies on engineering solutions that involve appropriate technology, solutions that can be designed, made and tested by engineering students themselves. Similarities are evident here with other instances of engineering design work by students that rely on service learning (such as CitationJones and Houghtalen, 2000; Hanna and Sullivan, 2005) or on solutions to address the needs of the poor (CitationHelweg, 2003).
CitationAl-Khafaji and Morse (2006), in fact, report on a significant and stable increase in scholarly articles on service learning in engineering, from single figures towards the end of the 1990s, to 29 during 2005. A range of approaches are clearly in evidence across this growing literature, but the scale of the issues in hand clearly leave scope for a wide range of foci, with the emphasis in this study on the role of student enquiry in relation to solutions that assist in addressing global poverty.
This study, which expands on and further illuminates an earlier report (CitationKahn and Pullen, 2006), outlines an evaluation of the effectiveness of the partnership between Developing Technologies, Imperial College London and the development professionals, looking at its role in educating students for development work. This further enables us to consider two specific issues related to enquiry-based learning that have received relatively little attention: how to ensure fairness to students who are pursuing lines of enquiry that involve varying levels of challenge; and the connection between the underlying basis for an enquiry and student motivation, with the link in this case made through sustainable solutions that are designed to tackle global poverty.
The framework for the evaluation
The methodology underpinning this evaluation is one that is both accessible and systematic — drawing on the Walker model (CitationValdez, 2000). The evaluation begins with a statement of the immediate purpose of evaluation, which in this case was to explore the extent to which the partnership has been effective in educating the students to provide sustainable solutions to real world problems. However, the use of realistic student enquiries as a means to this end also provides an important focus — given that this was the educational approach adopted by the partnership. These purposes then lead us to frame the primary objectives for the evaluation, building on objectives outlined in CitationDeveloping Technologies (2003): to what extent has the partnership been successful in educating students as professional engineers, through realistic enquiries linked to the developing world; and, to a lesser extent, in building capacity for engineering solutions for the developing world?
The evaluation further incorporates a model of change, which here lies in the use of realistic enquiries, carried out by students with appropriate patterns of support. CitationEdelson (1999) notes in this support the role of student motivation, accessibility of the tasks, level of background knowledge, ability to manage an enquiry and resource constraints. One might also add the nature of any interactions with peers and the ongoing facilitation available from the tutor. Enquiry-based learning represents a shift away from project work in which students follow a course laid down by the tutor, placing emphasis rather on student directed lines of enquiry, as CitationKahn and O’Rourke (2005) argue.
Indicators then provide a framework for identifying data sources, designing data collection methods and analysing the data: the remaining steps in this approach to evaluation. We classify in the indicators under three categories: outcome, process and enabling, on the basis of Helsby and Saunders’ EPO methodology (1993). Enabling indicators concern those dimensions that need to be in place for members of the project team to work successfully, and in addition to those indicators listed under this category in the table it is also important to be aware of the initial level of abilities and expectations that students bring with them to each of these areas. Process indicators refer to actions that team members carry out during the project, while outcome indicators concern the end points of the project, particularly the resulting student learning. It is useful to draw on the categories developed by CitationKnight and Yorke (2003): understanding; skills; efficacy beliefs (which concern the willingness of students to persist with complex activity); meta-cognition (or the awareness of, and control over, cognition). The selection of outcome indicators directly relates to the underlying model of change and to the objectives of the evaluation, incorporating modifications made in the light of an initial analysis of the data.
The students are key stakeholders, given that it is their professional education that forms the immediate focus for the project work. Data to address these indicators thus particularly concerns the student experience, given also the focus on their learning. In the period covered by this evaluation (2001–2004) 51 students on undergraduate degrees within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London carried out a project with support from Developing Technologies. Of these, working in 10 separate teams, 43 carried out a ‘Design, make, test’ (DMT) project within their third year. Each project involves students designing, making and testing a solution to an engineering problem. For instance, projects included developing a grass mower for rural Romania, a laminar flow cabinet for the cultivation of seedlings in Zimbabwe and a micro-hydraulic turbine generator for the developing world. Thirty-two of these students were involved in what were termed ‘partnership projects’, where the students also dealt directly with a client in a developing country, as in the projects for Romania and Zimbabwe.
The assessment of the project work included a report on the project by the team of students, incorporating a personal critique of their project by each student, typically around 500 words in length. While the students may exercise care in criticising any support that they receive, the critiques provide a detailed source of naturally occurring qualitative data. Measurement against the indicators largely occurs on the basis of this qualitative data: we thus rely on the Mode 1 concept of indicators as a focus for data collection and analysis, as outlined by CitationSaunders (2001). It was decided to supplement these critiques with a brief questionnaire to provide further qualitative data on the student viewpoint, including such questions as ‘How have you benefited from participating in a Developing Technologies project?’ and ‘What challenges have you faced?’
Table 1 Indicators for the evaluation, with a focus on student learning
Reporting against the indicators
We now proceed to analyse, in light of the indicators, the data from the various sources of information outlined in the above section. Overall, 550 comments from the critiques were categorised against the indicators in , as summarised in . It is apparent from the table that technical issues involved in designing, making and testing the engineering solution dominate the concern of students, although other issues such as the team work process are also important. In their comments on managing the project, the students emphasised the learning that occurred on how to manage a project; and they also highlighted the extent to which the developing world context was a motivating factor in working on the project. We will go on to focus more directly on issues of particular interest that emerge from the analysis of these responses.
Fifteen students completed the short questionnaire; each had taken a DMT project during 2003–04. While the data in from the questionnaire is not as rich as that from the project critiques, it confirms the general thrust of the findings from the project critiques, and also provides data on students’ intentions for further study and for careers.
Issues related to designing, making and testing
Clearly technical issues involved in the projects did dominate the concern of students (213 comments in the critiques). We focus in turn on the process, enabling and outcome indicators, before looking at issues related to team work and project management.
In terms of process, the projects appear not surprisingly from the student viewpoint to have been successful, with 40 students claiming technical success given the circumstances that they had faced, although concerns were raised by 14 students over the heavy workload on the project (e.g. ‘The workload was exceptionally high when compared to other groups’).
With regard to enabling factors, effective support from supervisors, technicians, external professionals within the UK external to the College, and local partners overseas was noted in 23 comments, with inadequate support only noted on three occasions (e.g. ‘We ended up getting contradictory information’). Significant concern was focused on the facilities to support the project: materials were difficult to order, and access to workshops was not always easy to arrange; and yet 12 students drew motivation from the realistic nature of the project.
The analysis further provides a view on student learning outcomes, with 57 suggestions for improvements in the process that was followed and in the final solution. For instance, one student noted, ‘The design process could have been conducted more systematically’, while another student observed: ‘With some electronics the torque required by the alternator would be reduced’.
It is interesting to note also that from the 78 comments that have been categorised, at least 37 directly relate to technical aspects of the projects. However, team work also appears as relevant, as does the motivation from the realistic nature of the project and the developing world context.
The importance of the team work process also emerged within the critiques (139 comments). The students claimed in the critiques that their teams had generally worked well (32 comments). In particular, the students noted an appropriate division of the workload (on 19 occasions, e.g. ‘I felt that each team member did the tasks that suited their strengths’), employing specific communication strategies (34 comments, such as ‘Each group meeting had specific areas for discussion’) and the use of team roles. In a limited number of cases a student observed that one or more other team members had not contributed fully. The students also made a range of comments as to how to improve the teamwork. It is interesting to note that the only issue from the critiques classed as an enabling factor was the division of some project groups into two. Students raised this on nine occasions, commenting on the communication difficulties that resulted with the other group.
Table 2 Summary statistics for comments made within the project critiques
Table 3 Categories for student responses within the questionnaire for the given areas, with frequency of response and illustrative data
In their 35 comments on managing the project, the students emphasised the learning that occurred on how to manage a project. The projects afforded the students their first opportunity on the degree programme to manage a realistic project, so it might be expected that the students would gain practical insights into project management. Only 11 comments were made within the critiques on the use of project planning techniques. For instance, one student indicated: ‘An initial schedule was drawn up in the first term and frequent project meetings were held’. Comments by the students on the management of their project instead primarily focused on possible improvements, with the need for improved planning, record keeping and scheduling all stressed.
Self-efficacy and awareness of learning
The critiques initially yielded limited information on the self-efficacy of the students. However, when this area was revisited in light of a further consideration of the literature, the issue of students persevering in the face of difficult circumstances was recognised. This is a key issue, recognising as it does that further work by the student could make a significant difference to the outcome of the project. During their critiques, 34 students identified one or more specific difficulties they had had to face during the project; and they also identified the strategies they had employed to overcome the difficulty. In three of these cases students noted that teamwork had helped them to face the difficulties, with five further students mentioning the realistic nature of the project work in this context, as according to one student:
The process of acquiring material for manufacturing work on the project was not found very helpful. … However this was typical of practical situations and gave the group a real life feeling of the project.
As CitationDweck (1999) notes, there is a clear link between motivation and willingness to persist in the face of challenging circumstances.
A further area included within the indicators was that of the students’ awareness of their own learning. CitationFlavell (1979) uses the term ’metacognition’ to describe the higher order thinking that controls the process of acquiring knowledge. Substantial learning did apparently occur, with 108 specific suggestions made as to how the projects could be improved, but this does not constitute an explicit awareness of learning. Such awareness is more in evidence in the 21 comments in critiques explicitly claiming some enhanced ability, but no direct evidence emerged from the analysis that the students sought to control the way in which they learnt on the project. The project work itself provides the focus for their attention, rather than how they learnt while pursuing the project.
Attitudes towards the developing world
It would be too much to claim that the students emerged from their project with a rounded picture of what is involved in relating to a client, or with an understanding of how to manage client relationships. Indeed, only two students suggested specific ways to improve usefulness for the developing world; one of these noted:
I would like to see a project run next year with the specific aim of replacing the alternator on our turbine with a PMG that can easily be made in the developing world.
One might instead say that an awareness is evident that the relationship needs to be managed, and that it was evident to the students that communicating with a client in a developing country often presented challenges. Indeed, the data outlined in suggests that where the development context was concerned the students primarily raised enabling factors or difficulties with the process in their critiques. However, only 32 of the 41 students were involved in partnership projects; these were the students who related to clients in a developing country. This must evidently be taken into account when making comparisons with other data emerging from this study.
The students noted particular difficulties in communicating with clients. Some groups found it impossible to establish reliable forms of communication, for instance in one case, with a client in Zimbabwe. And when the initial design specification was inadequate for the purposes of the project, then it would be difficult to agree with the client a more appropriate specification.
The comments by the students on the developing context are, however, dominated by statements that refer to the motivation that stemmed from working on a project that would be useful within the developing world; 26 comments were made to this effect. The force of these statistics is borne out in the data that emerges from the questionnaire, and in progression data on the students. The questionnaire asked whether students would be interested in taking on a project for their MEng the subsequent year. Of those who responded, seven students indicated that they would be, six that they would not and two might possibly. In the event, six students who had completed DMT projects during 2003–04 went on to undertake a further project related to developing countries during 2004–05. This suggests that the questionnaire responses provided a reasonable account of intentions at the time of the questionnaire, and at least for the immediate future.
Table 4 Categories of comments made within project critiques that relate to the context of the developing world with frequency of comment and illustrative comment
The questionnaire further asked about subsequent employment intentions: would the student prefer a job that allowed scope to work with developing countries? Eight students indicated that they would prefer such a job; two students would prefer work that combined engineering in both contexts; four students indicated that they might possibly be interested in work with the developing world but their choice would depend on other factors, while only one indicated that they would not want work with a developing country. It is, however, recognised that paid employment within a developed country that focuses on engineering in the developing world is scarce. One would not expect all, or even most, of these intentions to be borne out in the face of difficulty of finding the desired form of work or in the face of greater rewards from more conventional employment. But the stated intentions at least serve to indicate the level of motivation at the time the students were engaged in the project work, thereby confirming the implications of other data collected during this evaluation.
Emerging issues
In overall terms it is evident that the partnership between the charity, the College and other professionals has provided a worthwhile educational experience for the students involved, with the factors that CitationEdelson (1999) identified as critical in the successful use of enquiry-based learning in operation. Student motivation has been particularly evident, stemming in part from the realistic nature of the enquiries and the usefulness of the engineering solutions. The tasks were sufficiently accessible given the students’ background, partly due to the reliance on intermediate technology. Resource constraints and teamwork processes were at times a limiting factor, but this perhaps added to the realistic nature of professional work.
Immediate lessons clearly emerged for the ongoing conduct of these projects. Facilities and ordering processes for the students need further attention, as does the management of relationships with clients in the developing country. Project management and teamwork would also benefit from further scope attention, as would students’ awareness of the need to persist in the face of complexity and awareness of their own learning. One might ask the students to track the difficulties they encountered and the strategies they employed to overcome them, and then require reflection on this data, and thus on their self-efficacy. It will also be worth exploring whether strategies devised in other learning contexts to promote meta-learning are likely to be effective: an adapted version of CitationMeyer’s (2004) Reflections on Learning Inventory might provide a means to generate feedback.
Many universities, however, would be wary of adopting this model within their own contexts given the financial or organisational demands of initiating a charity. Perhaps the primary interest in this study lies less in the wholesale adoption of such a partnership, and more in the issues that emerge for learning that is based around a process of enquiry, and for wider purposes of education.
Fairness to students
Students involved in the projects raised issues that relate to fairness, as one might anticipate with realistic projects. In this case we have partnership and non-partnership projects, and projects carried out in two groups, as well as different projects carried out by further students on the degree programme. As indicated, several students commented on the heavy workload. One would expect that to bring a project to a reasonable conclusion workload should be broadly comparable across all projects. One might, of course, expect certain students to choose to devote more work to a project, but one could argue that this should be seen in terms of extending a project or enquiry rather than its basic completion. It is interesting in this regard that CitationAl-Khafaji and Morse (2006) for their design projects selected only those students with high motivation for the course rather than allowing self-selection, given the demands on workload. Here, we have further seen that partnership projects involved further difficulties of communication, and in general there is a range of enabling factors that have been seen to directly influence the effectiveness of a project, further covering technical, team, and project management. For instance, in relation to these technical issues variation was experienced by the students over workshop facilities and ordering of materials.
Clearly it will not be possible to even out such complexity, but where projects inherently include complications tutors will need to address the issues. It might be tempting for a tutor simply to give greater advice in this setting, but this should be resisted if the educational aim is for students to set the lines of enquiry. Tutors could offer further facilitation that respects the students’ role in driving the enquiry, but systematic strategies are likely to be required in order to manage the complex contexts associated with realistic project work.
We can first of all consider the expected learning outcomes of each project. It would be possible to allow scope for such emergent outcomes within this project work, rather than requiring that assessment focuses on planned outcomes (building on CitationMegginson, 1994, for instance). This would mean the introduction of one or more negotiated learning outcomes. One of the advantages of learning based on a process of enquiry concerns the breadth of abilities that can be developed (something noted, for instance, with problem-based learning, see CitationBoud and Feletti, 1991).
Another approach is to consider the influence of relevant enabling factors, and explicitly to consider in the assessment the conduct of the project in relation to these, with assessment criteria that account for this. The assessment of projects that are more fully enabled might thus focus more directly on the outcomes of the project, while projects where the students were hindered by issues beyond their control or where complexity was significantly greater from the start might take into account to a greater extent how these challenges were responded to.
A related approach is to provide additional targeted support in relation to these enabling factors. For instance, if the ability to deal with a client is not one of the intended outcomes of the learning process, then care should be taken to ensure that this does not become problematic in one context when another student is not dealing with a client. In this case, reliable communication systems, a carefully negotiated design specification and an initial investigation of available information resources might all need to be in place before agreeing a partnership project.
Applying such approaches will of course result in further complexity for the learning and assessment processes. But it would be possible to mitigate this through adopting a systematic approach across all of the projects. One could, for instance, develop a proforma that allowed tutors to assess each project in relation to such a range of factors. This might cover a negotiated learning outcome, an indication of the level of facilitation, resources and other support required for a project; or ways in which the assessment criteria would be applied. Clearly this will need to be tailored to each programme.
Enquiries by their very nature are unique. Where significant student choice is present in the selection of an enquiry, detailed consideration needs to be given to ensure that adequate enabling factors and assessment procedures are in place to ensure fairness between the students.
Motivation to learn
It is also worth considering student motivation as an enabling factor in an enquiry, in that it assists in the development of self-efficacy and the willingness to persist in the face of novel tasks — a critical element in the ability to pursue a complex enquiry. We have seen in this study that students found inspiration in the projects they completed, although perceived fairness also has the capacity to derail such inspiration. One of the strengths of these projects is that they address student motivation at a number of levels: realistic scenario, including engagement with a client and other professionals; and membership of a team. Indeed, a method such as enquiry-based learning relies heavily on the students’ willingness to direct and carry out their own enquiry.
The motivation evident in the projects considered here, however, goes beyond considerations that concern an enquiry or a profession, to include those that pertain to human solidarity, and to making a difference in the lives of others. Such factors are important in any human endeavour, including education. Indeed CitationFreire (1970), linked education based around student enquiry with revolution — the pedagogy for the oppressed. Many universities will be unwilling to connect education and revolution, but they might find a more engaged student body by enhancing ways in which they link wider human concerns to student enquiry. Why should sources of motivation be limited to training for future employment or study for its own sake? This study has certainly seen a value in education that addresses the service of others.
Further research could explore how the sources of motivation evident in this study are mediated socially, perhaps through focus group work with students. Specific networks of social interactions, termed ‘figurations’ by CitationElias (1994), are known to play a significant role in shaping students’ internalised modes of thought and their permanent dispositions, the habitus of CitationBourdieu (1993).
Conclusions
This evaluation has thus explored a human basis for education: realistic enquiries that in specific ways address issues of global concern, with the support of a charity. While we recognise that this stage of the research has drawn on a relatively limited set of data, we have been able to draw initial conclusions on the effectiveness of the partnership, and also highlight a number of key issues.
This study has explored ways in which the partnership has enabled engineering students to assist in contributing solutions to world poverty as a part of their degree programme; not only can student work be of direct value but such an approach has also been seen to underpin learning that is driven by a process of enquiry. Education within other professional disciplines similarly offers scope for student enquiry that directly serves the interests of others. This is particularly likely to be effective where students offer professional services on a pro bono basis, in collaboration with academics and professionals operating within the field. They are thus able to draw on a deep well of motivation that may help to underpin student enquiry.
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