Opportunities for and Barriers to Innovation in Engineering Education
Date
2019-01-04
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Abstract
The 21st Century has brought both tremendous promise and challenge for engineers. The need for sustainable development and growing pressures from automation are some of the societal challenges facing tomorrow’s engineering graduates. Educational institutions must ensure students possess competencies in professional skills, such as adaptability, critical thinking and creativity to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving ecosystem. Continuous improvement in teaching techniques and content will be required to ensure students are prepared for life beyond graduation. Technology-mediated course delivery, blended learning, and project-based learning are promising approaches to work lateral thinking and professional skills into the curriculum; but no new solution comes without drawbacks. It is critical that ongoing research be conducted and documented into the effectiveness of interventions so that informed decisions on course and program design can be made. This work presents findings and experiences of implementing a technical project-based, blended fluid mechanics course; analyzes factors that affected professional skills development indicated by twelve Graduate Attributes. Project-based and blended learning were found to be effective in developing professional skills, however several institutional barriers were identified to the scalability of these approaches. Two self-efficacy surveys were assessed for their reliability, and opportunities were identified for future improvements to be made on several survey questions. Opportunities for the development of professional modules on ethics and equity, professionalism, and lifelong learning were identified. End of term student surveys revealed that as student-centred approaches to teaching and learning increased, student perception of teaching quality decreased and workload increased, indicating a potential barrier to achieving buy-in from tenure-track instructors who rely on student end of term survey results for promotion. Teaching assistant training, resource allocation, risk management, and institutional memory were identified as critical areas requiring interventions for project-based learning to be sustained within the system. This work can be utilized to inform discussions on local program design within the University of Calgary, but the insights and ideas presented are relevant for instructors, institutions, and international initiatives looking to facilitate sustainable educational change across the post-secondary system as well.
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Keywords
Project-based learning, Engineering education, Fluid mechanics education
Citation
Meikleham, A. (2019). Opportunities for and Barriers to Innovation in Engineering Education (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.