Author: Prof Abel Nyamapfene

Academic career moves: Should I, or should I not?

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development, Uncategorized

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Image by Andrea Piacquadio

As always, the summertime months of June and July are awash with social media posts from happy academics announcing their moves to pastures anew, usually to academic departments within the much haloed research intensive universities. However, academic success is both a matter of personal endeavour and being in the right place, and being among the right people, at the right time. Hence for some, these summertime career moves might be a harbinger for reinvigorated career advancement. Sadly, however, for some, these announcements are a precursor to career stagnation, demise and its attendant ramifications. Why is this? Because no matter which university you find yourself in, your academic career will play out within you academic department and your research group; in short, the colleagues whom you interact with on a daily basis collectively serve as a strong determinant for your current and future career trajectory.

Hence as you pour out the wine to celebrate your success in securing that much-desired appointment, you might need to ponder this question: Is this move the right one for your career? Ideally, you should have carried out some fairly indepth research on the academic department you are moving to. However, I am not holding my breath. Despite the many hours I have spent on recruitment panels, I remain surprised by the utter lack of knowledge most applicants have on the department and position they are interviewing for. Perhaps that’s forgivable, given that, by and large, our academic careers are marked by excessive workloads which preclude many from investing time and effort in researching their target departments. However, as I have found out over a fairly lengthy career across multiple academic departments, you only need a few indicators to have a feel for a particular department. In this article I highlight some of these indicators, and as you will notice, all these indicators have their roots in EDI – equality, diversity and inclusion.

As a general rule, each academic department has an EDI charter prominently displayed on their institutional website, along with the eyewatering EDI initiatives that they are championing. Read the charter, and all the nice supporting initiatives, but don’t stop there. If you have looked at a couple of departmental EDI charters, you will soon recognise that they look and sound awfully the same, which might leave you to wonder who plagiarised from whom. You need to dig deeper, and this is where this article comes in.

Factors to consider when deciding to change department

If you are considering a departmental move, this is what you need to look out for, at the very minimum:

  1. Who gets to be professor in the department you are going to? Do these lucky individuals come from across all research strands within the department, or do they come mainly from a few core strands? Do education-focussed, and community and enterprise oriented-academics also get to be professors in this department? A generous spread of professorial appointments and promotions across education, enterprise and research is indicative of a healthy, airy department that is ready to reward excellence, wherever that excellence stems from. A narrow, dogmatic stream of professorial appointments is indicative of an impervious department ostensibly rooted to tradition, and hostile to creativity and innovation.
  2. How does the departmental professoriate stack up on the EDI stacks? Is the professoriate predominantly drawn from the dominant population, or is there a healthy mix of ethnicities, individualities and orientations from across the entire protected characteristics spectrum, as specified in the UK Equality Act 2010, for example? If the answer is a clear no, then this is a dog-eat-dog department; have nothing to do with it.
  3. What is the departmental ratio of the professoriate to the rest of the academics? How does this ratio compare with similar departments elsewhere? Too low a ratio, then know that this is a career-killing department where merit goes unrewarded. Stay away and look elsewhere.
  4. What are the characteristics of academic turnover in the department? Too high a turnover might indicate that the department is a hostile environment, and too low a turnover ratio might indicate a group of academics who have become so traumatised that they now view themselves as uncompetitive elsewhere. This is a soul-destroying department, stay away from it, unless you have a career death wish.
  5. What is the awarding gap at both undergraduate ad postgraduate taught level? Too high a gap indicates an insular department that is insensitive to the needs of any student and any member of staff who is not part of the dominant group, whatever and however the department defines dominant and non-dominant groupings. Only join this department at peril to your mental health and wellbeing.
  6. What is the health of the department’s postgraduate taught programmes? Are they flourishing, or, compared to other programmes elsewhere, are they static, or even wilting? Word of mouth is an important method of recruitment at postgraduate taught (PGT) level, especially in these days of connected social media. A department with non-competitive PGT programmes is symptomatic of non-supportive, hierarchical, monolithic departments.
  7. What is the health of the department’s postgraduate research programmes? What proportion of doctoral students get to complete their doctorates within reasonable timeframes, and who gets to drop out of their doctoral studies? High completion rates across the entire protected characteristics spectrum suggests a supportive environment. Drop out rates unhealthily skewed towards people with protected characteristics point to a department that is hostile to minoritised individuals, so be warned.
  8. Who gets to join the department? Healthy, inclusive departments tend to attract a heathy mix of rising stars and aspiring academics, whilst hostile departments tend to be the destination for academic colleagues who are down on their luck. Iron sharpens iron, so being amongst a cohort of enthusiastic, energised, supportive individuals is a good tonic for your academic career.
  9. Who gets to be featured in departmental newsletters and social media outlets? Is there too much preponderance on a few star academics, or do the departmental news announcements showcase an exciting array of success stories from across the entire department, students, academic staff and professional services staff included? Be warned, some departments are academic dictatorships, and this is no help to your academic career.
  10. Who gets to go onto the academic conference circuit? As academics we all need serious scholarly exposure as much as we need oxygen. If opportunities for conference attendance are reserved only for a select few, then reconsider your job offer. You may be moving into an academic cul de sac where your destiny is to be a bits-and-pieces, non-promotable academic.

These are only a few factors that I have identified in my own academic career. You may have a few additional ones of your own. Despite the individualistic hype endemic in the academic world, career development is, at best, a collective endeavour. So let’s share, and let us actively support each other as best as we can.

The UCL MSc Engineering and Education: Advice for potential applicants

Prof Abel Nyamapfene For the Student, Policy and Advocacy, Practice and Development
Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

The UCL MSc Engineering and Education is now three years old and going into its fourth year. Starting with only six students in September 2018, the MSc has seen applications rising at phenomenal pace, and entry into the programme is increasingly competitive. In this advisory note I give an overview of the MSc, and provide some hints on writing a competitive application for the MSc.

An overview of the MSc

The MSc Engineering and Education is an innovative and bespoke programme that is ideal for engineering lecturers in further and higher education, and engineers or consultants who work in the national and global economy supporting the development of engineers. It seeks to meet their current and future professional needs by:

  • Introducing current debates about the contribution of education and work in developing engineers’ expertise to assist them to design/redesign/contribute to engineering courses that develop 21st century skill needs;
  • stimulating and supporting research and innovative approaches in engineering education.

The programme is jointly delivered by academic staff from the UCL Institute of Education and the Faculty of Engineering Sciences.

An outline of the programme structure

The MSc programme consists of 180 credits and it is structured around two core modules worth 30 credits each:

  • Engineering and Education: Practice Innovation and Leadership
  • Engineering Learning and Teaching: Perspectives and Issues

Students can then choose to either take a further 30 credits from an identified list of UCL Institute of Education (IOE) modules and another 30 credits from Faculty of Engineering Sciences modules subject to meeting prerequisites and the approval of the module leader.  Alternatively, students can take 60 credits from the IOE list of modules. This flexibility in choice enables students who are professionally active in the field of engineering education, but who do not have an engineering degree to enrol on the MSc. This is followed by a dissertation, worth 60 credits, or alternatively, a report worth 30 credits together with an optional  module worth 30 credits.

The Engineering Learning and Teaching: Perspectives and Issues module is intended for both aspiring and practising engineering educators who wish to gain knowledge and expertise on the latest techniques for learning, teaching and assessment in engineering. Trainers in industry who wish to gain deeper insights into engineering education will also find the module relevant to their own practice. Individual module sessions are led by practising engineering educators and knowledge experts who have achieved recognition for championing and leading innovation in learning and teaching in engineering. Module participants explore key issues and debates in engineering learning and teaching and learn how to adapt current innovations in learning and teaching to their own educational practices.

The Engineering and Education: Practice Innovation and Leadership module aims to provide students with theoretical tools and practical perspectives to develop practical ideas on the interrelationship between the organisational environment, professional learning and expertise, and innovation in a range of engineering contexts. It explores the implications of understanding the engineering workplace as a key site for both learning and innovation, of collaborative practice across disciplinary and organisational boundaries as a key source of innovation, and of leadership in developing and maintaining the kinds of working practices and cultures that support learning and innovation. The module also looks at the role of policy in creating enabling frameworks within which engineers can work productively and innovatively.

Application Process

The MSc academic year runs from October to September of the following year. Applications for the following academic year start at the end of October in the current year, and run until the end of March, giving an application window of just five months duration. In addition to meeting the academic requirements, and securing professional and academic references, we also require you to submit a personal statement as part of the application. The personal statement helps us to evaluate your passion for engineering education as well as your aptitude and preparedness for the course. It is therefore important to spend some time thinking and writing the personal statement.

In developing your personal statement, you need to pay attention to the following:

  1. Explain why you want to do the MSc. Consider your educational and professional experiences, and explain how these have influenced you to consider going into engineering education. Also give us an indication of how the MSc is likely to contribute to your career goals. It’s not enough to say, for example, “I wish to become an engineering lecturer when I graduate.” Instead, tell us why you wish to become an engineering lecturer, and explain in detail, with reference to the learning outcomes of the MSc, how the MSc is going to help you in becoming an effective, high-impact engineering lecturer. This means that you must have indepth understanding of what it takes to become a successful engineering lecturer, and an understanding of how the MSc learning outcomes can contribute to this.
  2. Justify why we should offer you a position. Most people who are applying to enrol on the MSc meet the academic requirements, hence you should spend some thinking about your personal attributes and providing evidence why we should choose you ahead of other equally qualified applicants. Tell us about your current and previous engagement with engineering education related activities. Successful applicants are likely to demonstrate engagement with several aspects of engineering education and practice. This may include supporting the learning of other engineering students, promoting engineering to pre-university students, through, for example, engagement in STEM outreach programmes, or supporting schools to deliver engineering-focussed enrichment programmes for their students. Other initiatives that you might want to discuss may include supporting the professional development of practising engineers, through, for instance, delivering Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses and activities. For instance, active engagement with professional engineering institutions is something we look upon very favourably. Other activities that you may wish to discuss would be initiatives to improve equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within both the engineering profession and within engineering education.
  3. Show us that you are actively keeping pace with current debates and issues in engineering education and practice. Develop the habit of looking up and reading the literature on engineering education research. This can be through reading engineering education journal and conference articles. If you are a university student, make it a point to attend engineering learning and teaching seminars where your lecturers discuss the latest topics on engineering learning and teaching. Also look out for webinars presented by engineering institutions – these are typically free, and enable practitioners and educators to meet and discuss engineering education and training issues. If you have contributed to a conference, journal or webinar, let us know – give us a brief overview of your work, and how it has impacted the engineering education community.

Why not try the MSc?

There is no better time than now to get involved in engineering education research, policy and practice. Engineering is at the very centre of our ability to address global social, human welfare, environmental and economic challenges. However, our capacity to deliver solutions to these challenges is lacking. We desperately need to improve the supply of talent to engineering, to ensure diversity, inclusivity and openness, and to improve the quality and nature of engineering education and skills at all levels. Traditional methods and approaches have proved to be unequal to the task. We need new and fresh perspectives to the education and training of engineers at all levels, and you could be the one to lead us in achieving these goals. Have a look at what the UCL MSc Engineering and Education can offer you, and get in touch with us.

Phenomenography: An education research tool from, and for, education researchers

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

What is phenomenography?

Phenomenography is a qualitative research approach that is increasingly used to investigate the differences, or the variations, in the way that  individuals within a specified population experience a particular phenomenon (Marton, 1981). For example, within education, phenomenography can be used to identify and quantify the different ways a given class of students experience a particular aspect of learning. More specifically, phenomenography my be defined as “a research method for mapping the qualitatively different ways in which people experience, conceptualize, perceive, and understand various aspects, and phenomena in the world around them” (Marton, 1986).

What are the origins of phenomenography?

Phenomenography originated from the research into  students’ experience  of  learning carried out at Goteborg University in Sweden in the 1970s by Marton and his colleagues (Tight, 2016). The main goal of this research was to understand, from the perspective of the students, the different ways they conceived of and went about their learning.

What are the assumptions underpinning phenomenography?

The key assumption underpinning phenomenography is  that there are only so many ways that a given population can perceive, understand or experience any given phenomenon  (Tight, 2016). The full range of different ways  that a given population experiences a phenomenon at any point in time is termed  the outcome space (Åkerlind, 2005). These different ways of experiencing a phenomenon can each be represented by a category of description, and these categories are hierarchically organised, with the higher-level categories encompassing the lower-level categories, and constituting a more developed way of understanding the phenomenon (Täks, Tynjälä, & Kukemelk, 2016; Tight, 2016).

Why is phenomenography appropriate for education research?

According to Marton and Booth (1998), learning comprises two aspects that are inextricably intertwined, namely the “what” aspect and the “how” aspect. The “what” aspect refers to the content of learning, and the “how” aspect refers to the way in which learning takes place. With respect to the “what” aspect, it is found that there is a qualitative variation in student learning outcomes. Similarly, with respect to the “how” aspect, it is found that there is a qualitative variation in learners’ approach to learning. Since phenomenography is a research method that focusses on determining variations in individuals’ perceptions and experiences of specified phenomena, it is well-suited to studying learners experiences and perceptions of learning.

When is it ideal to use phenomenography in education research?

Phenomenography can help educators to identify and foster learning approaches that facilitate a better understanding of the subject material that students are engaging with. This is consistent with research findings suggesting that different learning approaches lead to different learning outcomes (Marton, 1986).  As an example, Marton and his colleagues have used phenomenography  to identify and document differences in what students learn in specific learning tasks and to map these differences to the individual learning approaches that students adopt in the specified learning tasks (Marton, 1986). 

Phenomenography can also be used to uncover the different understandings that people have of specific phenomena and to sort them into conceptual categories. With respect to education, “learning, thinking, and understanding are dealt with as relations between the individual and that which he or she learns, thinks about, and understands” (Marton, 1986). Phenomenography enables us to understand these relationships, which, in turn, enables us to develop pedagogical interventions to improve the quality of student learning.  This is consistent with  Marton’s belief that  the goal of learning is to change  “the  way  a person  experiences,  conceptualizes,  or understands  a phenomenon” (Marton, 1981). 

How can phenomenography be incorporated into learning and teaching improvement?

Phenomenography is typically incorporated into learning and teaching improvement using this two-stage process (Åkerlind, 2008; Han & Ellis, 2019):

  1. Use phenomenography to identify variations in student experiences of the learning and teaching environment, including their perceptions and understanding of taught concepts.
  2. Implement strategies to shift students away from the less desirable variations to the more desirable ones, for example, by designing learning and teaching programmes that maximise students’ opportunities for discerning the full range of key features of the taught concepts.

What sort of research questions are addressed by phenomenography?

The typical research question addressed by  phenomenographic research is of the form (Booth, 1997):

  • How do the group of people we are interested in understand, or experience, this or that concept or phenomenon before and/or after studying it? 

As an example, Bucks and Oakes (2011) used the following pair of research questions in their study which sought to uncover the different ways that first year engineering students understand different programming concepts:

  • What are the qualitatively different ways that the conditional and repetition structures found in most programming languages are understood?
  • What are the ways that first-year engineering students understand these concepts?

Another example of research questions used in phenomenographic studies, is the research question formulated by Daniel, Mann, and Mazzolini (2016) in their study of academics’ experiences of the university lecture:

  • What are the different ways of experiencing lecturing?

Finally, a third example of typical  research questions used in phenomenographic studies is the pair of research questions that Fila (2017) used in in his study of  the ways that engineering students experience innovation during engineering projects:

  • What are the qualitatively different ways engineering students experience innovation during their engineering projects?
  • What are the structural relationships between the ways engineering students experience innovation?

Finally, what are the methods typically used in phenomenography?

Phenomenography is best viewed as a methodology whereby the actual methods used  in carrying out the research vary according to the specific question being addressed (Booth, 2001). Typical data collection methods include semi-structured interviews, open-ended questionnaires, written reports, video, think-aloud methods, and observation (Booth, 2001; Han & Ellis, 2019).

For small numbers of research participants, the semi-structured interview is often the preferred method since it provides rich and in-depth descriptions. For larger numbers of participants, the preferred method is the open-ended questionnaire since it is easier to administer and allows a wider range of experiences of a phenomenon to be captured (Han & Ellis, 2019). In practice, both methods are often used in conjunction as this allows both breadth and depth of variations to be covered in the data.

In line with most other qualitative methods, purposeful sampling in which the diversity of the sample is maximised to ensure a rich assortment of experiences is used (Booth, 2001; Daniel et al., 2016). The objective for this is to exhaust any variation in experience, and data collection is often extended until there is no further variation.

Data analysis consists of reading, analysing and categorising the collected data with the goal of identifying a set  of qualitatively distinct, logically related, ways of experiencing the phenomenon being investigated (Daniel et al., 2016).  This is an iterative process which continues until a stable set of distinct categories is obtained. Collectively, these categories constitute the outcome space of the phenomenographic study, and their dissemination is accompanied by descriptions of the essential aspects of each category, illustrated by pertinent extracts from the data (Booth, 2001).

References

Åkerlind, G. S. (2005). Variation and commonality in phenomenographic research methods. Higher Education Research & Development, 24(4), 321-334. doi:10.1080/07294360500284672

Åkerlind, G. S. (2008). A phenomenographic approach to developing academics’ understanding of the nature of teaching and learning. Teaching in Higher Education, 13(6), 633-644. doi:10.1080/13562510802452350

Booth, S. (1997). On Phenomenography, Learning and Teaching. Higher Education Research & Development, 16(2), 135-158. doi:10.1080/0729436970160203

Booth, S. (2001). Learning Computer Science and Engineering in Context. Computer Science Education, 11(3), 169-188. doi:10.1076/csed.11.3.169.3832

Bucks, G., & Oakes, W. (2011). Phenomenography as a Tool for Investigating Understanding of Computing Concepts.

Daniel, S., Mann, L., & Mazzolini, A. (2016). A phenomenography of lecturing. Paper presented at the 44th SEFI Conference, Tampere, Finland. http://sefibenvwh. cluster023. hosting. ovh. net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/daniel-aphenomenography-of-lecturing-56_a. pdf.

Fila, N. D. (2017). A phenomenographic investigation of the ways engineering students experience innovation. Purdue University,

Han, F., & Ellis, R. A. (2019). Using Phenomenography to Tackle Key Challenges in Science Education. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(1414). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01414

Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography ? Describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10(2), 177-200. doi:10.1007/bf00132516

Marton, F. (1986). Phenomenography—A Research Approach to Investigating Different Understandings of Reality. Journal of Thought, 21(3), 28-49. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42589189

Marton, F., & Booth, S. (1998). The Learner’s Experience of Learning. In The Handbook of Education and Human Development (pp. 513-541).

Täks, M., Tynjälä, P., & Kukemelk, H. (2016). Engineering students’ conceptions of entrepreneurial learning as part of their education. European Journal of Engineering Education, 41(1), 53-69. doi:10.1080/03043797.2015.1012708

Tight, M. (2016). Phenomenography: the development and application of an innovative research design in higher education research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 19(3), 319-338. doi:10.1080/13645579.2015.1010284

Towards an understanding of the current state of Engineering Education

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research, For the Student, Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Introduction

Kitty O’Brien Joyner (Langley’s first female engineer) Credit: NASA/Langley Research Center

Over the past two decades, employers, governments, and practising engineers have become increasingly critical of the current state of engineering education.  The consensus is that current engineering education is ill-suited for the modern engineering workplace.  Graduate engineers progressing into the world of work perceive a disjunction between the engineering education they have gone through and the engineering work they are required to undertake. On the political and economic front, governments fear that the products of current engineering education do not have the skills to drive the economic transformation that their nations need to remain competitive.

In this blog piece, I present five articles that can help you get an insight into the current transformations that are taking place in engineering education. The first article, from UNESCO, gives an overall insight into the global state of engineering education. Although this article was published in 2010, it remains highly relevant to understanding global practices in engineering education. The second article, from the National Academy of Engineering, takes us to the thoughts and discussions that took place in the United States at the turn of the century as they tried to determine the sought of engineer who would thrive and prosper in the 21st century. The third piece of work that I present here is Guru Madhavan’s book Think like an engineer, which, through stories and anecdotes, posits that the modern-day engineer is all these things – a problem-solver, a visionary, an innovator, and a pragmatist. The fourth piece of work is Goldberg and Somerville’s 2014 book in which they share their experiences in transforming engineering education in a start-up engineering school and in an established research university. My fifth recommendation is the MIT report by Ruth Graham which seeks to identify current and emerging institutional leaders in engineering education.

My five key readings

This UNESCO Engineering Report is the outcome of a collaborative effort by individuals and engineering organisations led by UNESCO that sought to highlight the importance of engineering to the solution of most of the problems and challenges that the world is currently facing. This includes issues affordable health care, energy, transportation, climate change, drinking water, natural and man-made disaster mitigation, environmental protection, and natural resource management. Authored by over 120 individuals, the report discusses what engineering is, and provides case studies of how engineering can be harnessed to solve the many challenges and problems the world is facing. Importantly, the report provides an overview of engineering and engineering education across the world. The challenges highlighted in this report have since been crystallised into the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the report is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why engineering and engineering education are key to the resolution of these goals.

  • National Academy of Engineering. (2004). The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/10999.

This book is the outcome of a project initiated by the United States National Academy for Engineering to envision the future of engineering and engineering education. The book identifies the key attributes and aspirations that we now associate with the 21C engineer. This is a useful reading for anyone who wishes to understand the motivations underpinning current engineering education reforms.

  • Madhavan, G. (2016). Think like an engineer: Inside the minds that are changing our lives. Oneworld Publications

This book was written by an individual with experience in both engineering practice and policy making, and it gives unique insights into the thought-processes of engineers. Drawing from his own experiences and using case studies drawn from a variety of engineering disciplines, the author suggests that engineers blend and structured thinking, common sense and creativity, and their own insights and personal intuitions into engineering problem solving. Importantly, the book highlights the impact of an engineer’s personal circumstances and background to the unique insights that they bring to engineering problem solving. This book is important for someone seeking to understand the engineering thought processes that are critical to engineering problem solving and creativity.

  • Goldberg, D. E., & Somerville, M. (2014). A whole new engineer. The coming revolution in Engineering Education. Douglas MI: Threejoy.

This book provides an insider perspective into the engineering education reforms implemented at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and the was the Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The book gives the shared philosophy and vision underpinning the reforms carried out at Olin, a small start-up engineering college, and at the University of Illinois, a well-established, large, research university founded in 1867.  The book is ideal for individuals wishing to learn “from the horse’s mouth” what it takes to carry out successful engineering education reform.

This is a groundbreaking report that MIT commissioned to get a global overview of what constitutes the cutting edge of engineering education, and to gain insights into the future progression of engineering education. The report is based on interviews with 50 global opinion leaders in engineering education from 18 countries and addresses the following questions:

  1. Which institutions worldwide are considered the current leaders in engineering education?
  2. Which institutions worldwide are considered the emerging leaders in engineering education?
  3. What key challenges are likely to constrain the global progress of engineering education?
  4. How is engineering education worldwide likely to develop in the future?

Getting started in Engineering Learning & Teaching: My top five articles

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

Introduction

It can be a daunting task for someone getting into engineering learning and teaching to identify the papers they need to read in order to get started. At a minimum, I presume that the colleague who is starting out needs a brief overview of the history of engineering education so as to get some grounding in the field. They might also need something on learning and teaching methods in engineering that is easy to read, is reasonably up to date and has proven itself over the years. Then they might want some concrete proof of what works and what doesn’t work in practice. They might also want to know why learning and teaching practices might need to be reformed, and getting this evidence, they might also be looking to hear from someone who has actually been involved in some engineering education reform and lived to tell the tale. In this blog piece I provide 5 articles that will go some way to providing answers to these question.

Goodhew, P. (2014). Teaching Engineering. All you need to know about engineering education but were too afraid to ask. Royal Academy of Engineering. Available at: http://www.goodhew.co.uk/GoodhewTeachingEngineeringDec14plus.pdf

This book, written by an engineering educator who has been at the coalface of engineering education reform for the past two decades, has been freely available in one form or another since 2010. It provides concise coverage of the key topics in engineering learning and teaching, and for this reason it is ideal for the reader who wishes to catch up quickly with current trends in the field.

Passow, H. J., & Passow, C. H. (2017). What competencies should undergraduate engineering programs emphasize? A systematic review. Journal of Engineering Education, 106(3), 475-526. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20171

Research into engineering learning and teaching has only recently begun to move on from a stage where the bulk of published material is from practitioners reporting about their own experiences within the classroom. Most of this work produces outcomes that are difficult to replicate in different settings., In contrast, this paper uses the systematic review approach to investigate and identify what works and what does not work within engineering learning and teaching. By definition, a systematic literature review is a comprehensive, transparent search for evidence that is conducted over multiple sources from multiple databases to identify outcomes and results that have been replicated and reproduced by many researchers. This means that findings from this study are more likely to be replicable and therefore to be more valuable to both researchers and the practitioners.

Froyd, J. E., Wankat, P. C., & Smith, K. A. (2012). Five major shifts in 100 years of engineering education. Proceedings of the IEEE, 100(Special Centennial Issue), 1344-1360. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6185632

A common inclination amongst those of us privileged enough to be actively engaged in the current phase of engineering education reform is to assume that learning and teaching methods in engineering have remained static until now. History says otherwise. This paper takes the reader through the five epochs of engineering education reform that have taken place in the USA. Other countries have gone through similar experiences, although the details may differ here and there. Being aware of historical trends is important as it helps reformers to be on the lookout for any potential pitfalls in their practice.

Trevelyan, J. (2007). Technical coordination in engineering practice. Journal of Engineering Education, 96(3), 191-204. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2007.tb00929.x

A longstanding accusation brought against engineering education is that there is a disjunction between what is taught in engineering school and what graduate engineers are required to do when they move into the engineering workplace. This paper reports the outcomes of a study carried out to identify the engineering skills, attitude and technical knowledge that really matter in the workplace. The paper therefore provides the engineering educator with something to work toward as they prepare their students for the engineering workplace.  

Mitchell, J.E., Nyamapfene, A., Roach, K. and Tilley, E. (2021) Faculty wide curriculum reform: the integrated engineering programme, European Journal of Engineering Education, 46:1, 48-66. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2019.1593324

Few education reformers have the opportunity to design institutional engineering curriculum completely from scratch. Instead, most reformers must work from a live engineering curriculum with real students on it, and with educators who are committed to it. This has its own challenges. This paper gives the reader insights on how a well-established research institution went about reforming its engineering curriculum.

Engineering Learning & Teaching: Top 10 Titles for 2020

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Reflections

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

The year 2020 has finally come to an end, and we are off to a new start with the year 2021. This is also the fifth year the the Engineering Learning and Teaching blog has been running. I have had the opportunity to engage, through this blog, with students, engineering educators, researchers and practising engineers from literally every corner of the world, and it has been a very exciting and immensely rewarding experience for me.

Viewership has steadily increased from an average of 65 views per month in 2015 to the present 800 views per month in 2020. Thank you for all your support over the past five years, and I look forward to another exciting year as we continue our journey, dissecting and analysing issues in engineering education as they emerge. In today’s blog piece, I present the top ten articles on the Engineering Learning and Teaching Blog.

These ten topics illustrate the diversity of the blog’s readership, and I am looking forward to expanding beyond this range. If you have suggestions for topics that you would like me to explore, just let me know via the comments section, or via twitter (@AbelNyamapfene), or via linkedIn or send me an email (a dot nyamapfene at ucl dot ac dot uk)

1: Interdisciplinary Engineering Education: Difficult, but not Impossible

This blog was primarily written for the busy engineering academic and administrator. The blog addresses two questions relating to interdisciplinarity in engineering education: For the ordinary engineering academic, it serves to answer this question: “What is interdisciplinary education, and how can I get started?” And for the senior engineering academic tasked with leading engineering degree programmes, it seeks to provide answers to the question: “How do we develop a truly interdisciplinary engineering curriculum?”

2: Engineering Education: Potential Journals in Which to Publish

Engineering academics usually have training in the physical sciences, and engineering education research is usually an entirely new research discipline for them. This blog helps to smoothen their journey into engineering education research by providing them with a list of bona fide journals that they can publish in. The Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN) has set up a dedicated EER Journals page on their website listing some of the key journals in the field. I have provided a mirror list here: REEN Engineering Education Research (EER) Journal List.

3: The Piano Method for Studying Mathematics

This post was written primarily for students of engineering who are starting on their engineering studies, but are living in fear of the engineering mathematics modules they have to cover. This blog seeks to inform the student that mathematics, at its barest minimum, is a practice that one can master only through discipline and practice. Using the example of someone learning to play the piano, the blog emphasises that mastery of mathematics requires a lot of passion , determination, and willingness to practise constantly.

4: Blended synchronous learning and teaching: Is this the future of university teaching?

I wrote this blog in 2017, well before the current COVID-19 pandemic, to publicise our then novel approach to learning and teaching on the UCL MSc Engineering and Education that enables students to attend virtually or in person. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this hybrid approach has become mainstream, and this blog provides useful insights that other teachers can adopt in their own teaching.

5: Excelling in University-level Mathematics, and not Just Surviving

One of the main reasons why I think early-stage engineering students often struggle is that they have not yet developed a disciplined process of carrying out their academic work. In this blog I discuss some of the critical study skills that students of mathematical disciplines such as engineering ought to acquire. A lot has been written on study skills, and I have gone through some of the key writings to distil the essential elements that a first year student embarking on a mathematically-oriented degree programme ought to know and make use of. I wrote this blog in 2015. However, following the COVID-19 pandemic, we have built in all the study steps that I outlined in this blog into our online engineering mathematics teaching, and this has provided our students with a helpful, structured study approach for which they are very grateful.

6: Student Assignments, Missed Deadlines and the Planning Fallacy

As academics and students, we are all familiar with the rush to submit assignments just before the deadline expires. It doesn’t matter how much time the lecturer allows for the assignment, statistically most students will submit their assignments on or at the close of the deadline, and more often than not, these submissions will be rushed and clearly unpolished. In this blog I raise this issue, and suggest that this may be down to the planning fallacy, whereby students routinely overestimate their capabilities, and underestimate the amount of work that they need to do.

7: Excelling in Engineering School: Collaborate – Being smart is not enough

One of the key study skills that engineering students have to muster is collaboration with their peers. Usually our students are high performers who are used to individual study in high school. Often, such students tend to struggle in the first year at university, and a key reason is that they have chosen to ignore the advice : “Two heads are better than one” when it comes to studying. In this blog, I use findings from a range of studies to convince students that team-working and peer collaboration are critical to their success as students, and to their success as practising professionals when they graduate.

8: The global state-of-the-art in engineering education: A review

As engineering academics, we often have education leadership roles thrust upon us, not because we have shown any particular aptitude for engineering education, but as an obligatory requirement as senior academics within our academic departments. As a conscientious academic thrust into this unfamiliar role, you may well be wondering:

  1. Whose voice should I listen to if I am considering curriculum change in my own school?
  2. Which successful institutions, worldwide, should I turn to for guidance?
  3. Of these successful institutions, which ones closely match my own, in terms of size, operational environment and institutional education mission?
  4. Of the plethora of engineering education models out there, which ones are likely to stand the test of time, and which one are just passing fads?

One source that you can turn to is the publication by Ruth Graham: “The global state-of-the-art in engineering education: Outcomes of Phase 1 benchmarking study” In this blog I review this important publication, and hopefully this will encourage you to explore the publication in more detail.

9: UK-based Engineering Education Research (And Related) Phd Theses since 2000

As the discipline of Engineering Education Research (EER) becomes more and more mainstream, an increasing number of people are seeking to pursue PhD research in this area. However, as a new discipline, the number of publicly available EER PhD dissertations is still small, and difficult for the novice EER researcher to locate. In this blog, I present a list of 66 EER PhD Dissertations undertaken in UK universities, and completed and released into the public domain in the period 2000 -2016.

10: The UCL-Ventura breathing aid: An insight into the emerging engineering practices of the 21st century

The COVID-19 pandemic has been catastrophic for most of us. However, as so often happens in times of disaster, it has also shone a light on the best of humanity. The collaborative design and development of urgently required breathing kits is a case in point. From an engineering education point of view, these collaborative efforts provided critical insights into how individuals and organisation collaborate in real life to get things done. The UCL-Ventura breathing aid is just one example of many such projects. In this blog, I review the work undertaken to develop the UCL-Ventura breathing aid, with the specific objective of drawing parallels between this project and the skills and competences that students learn in challenge based classes, and in final year group projects.

Reflecting on my academic career: Why I joined the Integrated Engineering Programme

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Today I was rummaging the Internet looking for my previous works and publications, as I always do, just like most other academics are prone to do, at least the academics I am acquainted with, and they are many. And guess what, I came across a talk I presented at UCL in 2017, exactly four years after I joined the UCL Engineering flagship programme framework – the Integrated Engineering Programme, or IEP, in short.

In this talk I reflect on public perceptions of engineering, as well as the great history of British Engineering. I start off with a quote from Jeremy Clarkson, yes, Jeremy Clarkson of the motoring TV programmes Top Gear and The Grand Tour fame. Jeremy Clarkson has a weird way of interpreting the world of motoring, and as an engineer I find myself disagreeing with him throughout his programmes, but sometimes he utters something that makes me look up and say “You might have a point there, Jeremy!”

And as I always do in most of my talks on engineering education, I went back to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great 19th century engineer, and I was publicly wondering – is the current engineering curriculum capable of producing new engineers of Brunel’s stature?

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern, photograph by Robert Howlett. Now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Why Brunel? He is my engineering hero, as anyone who has ever sat down with me to discuss engineering will know. And why not – everyday without fail, before the COVID-19 lockdown, I would set out, four/five days a week on my commute to UCL, and see and use some of the iconic engineering artefacts that he created or inspired. Every weekday, on my way to and fro work, I drive over the Clifton Suspension Bridge, designed by Brunel in 1831 when he was aged just 24, and completed in 1864, after he had died.

 Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol.Photograph by Stuart Edwards, (WT-en) StuartEdwards at English Wikivoyage

I then drive past the SS Great Britain, again designed and built by Brunel, and the first iron steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 1845.

SS Great Britain in dry dock in Bristol, 2003.
Photograph taken by (Robert Brewer) and released under the GFDL and cc-by-sa.

I park my car, and walk into Bristol Temple Meads to catch the train to London, again travelling on a railway line first designed and built by Brunel. Thirty minutes into my train ride, I go through the Box Tunnel, the 3 kilometre long tunnel through Box Hill, near Bath, built under Brunel’s guidance, and which was the longest rail tunnel at the time of its opening in 1841.

Box Tunnel, Bath, UK (Taken 9 April 2017: Great Western Railway)

In my talk, I concluded that our current curriculum might not possibly produce someone of Brunel’s stature, except, perhaps, by accident. However, I noted that given the ongoing curriculum changes in engineering, as exemplified by the UCL Integrated Engineering Programme, there is some possibility that this will happen someday.

Here is a link to the 2017 talk, and please, let me have your comments. It will be nice to hear from you all what you really think about emergent engineering curricula such as the UCL Integrated Engineering Programme.

Link to “Putting the creativity back into Engineering Education”: https://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Play/7683

Seeking your first post-PhD academic role: Why not consider the teaching-focused role?

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Practice and Development

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Photo by Tra Nguyen on Unsplash

The research that I undertook for my Doctorate in Education clearly indicates that the majority of PhD students dream of pursuing a research and teaching academic career, failing which, they might consider non- academic roles in industry and commerce. Going into a teaching-focused academic role is not the done thing for most PhD students. This is not surprising. Compared to the research and teaching academic role, the teaching-focused role has largely been a low status role with poor working conditions. In fact, it has only been in the past few years that universities have begun putting in place credible career pathways for academics on the teaching-focused pathway. However, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic is changing all that.

COVID-19 as a driver for change

Of course, it goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has been, and remains, a dark ominous cloud over our personal and professional lives. Nevertheless, just like any dark cloud of any significance, there is usually a silver lining. Within academia, that silver lining is that the pandemic suddenly brought teaching to the forefront of academic activity.

Within the UK, all academic teaching abruptly moved online at the beginning of March and has remained thus to date. This move was a shock to the entire university system, despite decades-long predictions that online education was poised to become a big part of higher education.  Almost instantaneously, everyone within higher education – revered professors and early-career academics included – became novices in the new game of online and blended learning delivery. University leaders, fearful that teaching might implode at any time and imperil the entire fee-based university income, suddenly shifted their attention to teaching provision. The outcome was that long-deferred investments in online learning capability were urgently activated, and the entire university community became one large community of learning in online pedagogy and has since remained so.

The growing importance of teaching within universities

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

It has since become apparent that as universities seek to provide a good online student experience, recruitment for teaching-focused academics has surged. And not only that, the expectations placed on the teaching-focused role has changed. Whilst at one time, it may have been enough to demonstrate some experience or even just some awareness of teaching pedagogy to land a teaching-focused role, this is no longer the case, post-pandemic. Recruitment panels are now seeking individuals who not only have day to day teaching experience.  They are now competing to secure the services of individuals who, in addition to having substantial teaching experience, also have demonstrable leadership and expertise across a range of subject-specific pedagogies. This can only mean one thing – the teaching-focused academic role has just become very important, and very attractive, and very competitive.

What this means for the PhD student

It is no longer enough for PhD students to focus only on research, or to do the least permissible amount of teaching in their departments. Teaching expertise is now highly valued, and PhD students should now invest in becoming credible professional educators, even if their future lies in research. Teaching is a significant income stream for any university, and now that stream is shaky. Higher education has become a seller’s market – the student is now in control, and the student experience is now king, whether online or face-to-face. And this is not going away, even if COVID-19 disappears. Anecdotal evidence suggests that since the beginning of the current academic year, six months after universities were forced online, the quality of education provision has never been better.  Worldwide, universities have upped their game, and this has ushered in a new era of superior education provision. Students will not let this go, and it is very unlikely that we will ever go back to the taken-for-granted, sloppy standards of the pre-COVID-19 era.

Strategies for adapting to change

How then must a PhD student respond to this changing landscape? In 2016 , I wrote a blog piece entitled “Preparing for an Academic Role – Not Just a Job, but a Calling” in which I cautioned that the academic role has become so competitive that PhD students have to do so much more if they are to land a full-time role when they graduate. This now also applies to the teaching-only academic role.

As I cautioned, it is now critical that PhD students should seek to gain recognition as accomplished teachers within their subject disciplines.  It is no longer enough to take up teaching support roles with a view to whiling away the time and getting paid. Take up these support roles as an apprenticeship in which you need to achieve teaching mastery. Take advantage of the professional development schemes within your university and invest your time and effort in improving your teaching skills. Seek to attain teaching recognition as a Fellow, or Associate Fellow, of the Higher Education Academy. Most universities in the UK run this recognition scheme, and outside of the UK, there are alternative schemes that achieve the same purpose.  

And take the scholarly literature on education seriously. Before the pandemic, discipline-based education research was frowned upon – it was for those who were viewed as being on the “lunatic fringe” of higher education. Not so now. For instance, during the past summer, engineering education conferences and seminars have been swamped by an avalanche of new faces as academics at all career stages have been seeking to improve their pedagogic skills. Join the bandwagon, or risk never getting a foothold on an academic career. Teaching is no longer a cinderella activity – it now matters.

Concluding remarks

The university landscape is currently undergoing change, and it is unlikely we will go back to where we were before the pandemic. Indeed, education technologies to support novel forms of online and blended learning were already in place before the pandemic. However, it needed a lightning spark to set us onto the pathway to transform educational practices within universities.  COVID-19 is that lightning spark, and a new future where teaching matters is beckoning.  

REEN Engineering Education Research (EER) Journal List

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Looking for a journal in which to publish your Engineering Education Research (EER)? Look no further. The Research in Engineering Education Network (REEN) has set up a dedicated EER Journals page on their website listing some of the key journals in the field. What I like about this EER journal list is that, in addition to providing links to each journal, they also outline the scope of each journal, together with an indication of the types of papers that each journal accepts.

The journals currently listed on the REEN EER Journal page (as of today, 03 October 2020) are:

  1. Advances in Engineering Education (AEE)                                       
  2. Journal of Engineering Education (JEE)            
  3. American Journal of Engineering Education (AJEE)                       
  4. Journal of Engineering Education Transformations (JEET)
  5. Australasian Journal of Engineering Education (AJEE)                   
  6. Journal of International Engineering Education (JIEE)
  7. Engineering Studies                                                                             
  8. Journal of Pre-college Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)  
  9. European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE)                         
  10. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering (JWM)
  11. IEEE Transactions on Education                                                         
  12. International Journal of Engineering Education (IJEE)                    
  13. Studies in Engineering Education (SEE)
  14. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP)  
  15. Journal of Civil Engineering Education (JCEE)

The Engineering Education Research landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa: Some insights

Prof Abel Nyamapfene Engineering Education Research ,

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8976-6202

Photo of Mt Kilimanjaro by Casey Allen on Unsplash

Introduction

The insights that I am sharing in this blog piece are the unintended outcome of a purely pedagogic exercise – to diversify the reading list of the MSc Engineering and Education at University College London (UCL). This MSc is designed for engineers, teachers of engineering and engineering policy makers who wish to develop innovative strategies to improve engineering education.

Over the course of the academic year, we introduce our MSc students to a diverse range of academic papers covering key topics in Engineering Education Research (EER). For instance, throughout the year students on the MSc get to engage with current thoughts and ideas in EER areas such as:

  • Entrepreneurship in engineering education,
  • Sustainability Education for Engineering,
  • Curriculum reform/transformation in engineering education
  • Ethics, equality, diversity and inclusion in engineering education
  • Innovative/transformative teaching in engineering education
  • Problem/project/challenge based learning in engineering
  • Active/Collaborative learning
  • Engineering Design
  • Internships/industrial experience,
  • Open and online teaching and learning

Background to this exercise

Most of the items on our reading list are from the West, for the simple reason that these are more readily available. Unfortunately, this tends to reinforce a primarily Western/Anglo Saxon view of current topics in EER. Engineering Education is a highly social activity, and we would like our students to explore various aspects of Engineering Education from a diversity of perspectives. We are especially keen for our students to explore through these readings, the various nuanced adaptations of standard methodologies like problem based learning across different regions of the world.

Moreover, our MSc is truly international, with students coming in from a range of countries all over the world. We want our students to bring along their own experiences and to critically evaluate these experiences in informed discussions with their colleagues who are from entirely different nationalities. Difference breeds creativity and innovation, and in designing the MSc we have specifically sought to make it a melting cauldron of diversities of opinions and thoughts, all fuelled by scholarly research from every corner of the globe. We are therefore compiling journal and conference papers on any topic in EER from regions and countries that are underrepresented in our reading list. This includes most countries in Sub Saharan Africa.

How we carried out the exercise

We carried out a search of EER articles emanating from Sub Saharan Africa. This includes countries like Nigeria, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa and Namibia. We used the following databases – African Journals OnLine (AJOL), International African Bibliography Online, African Education Research Database, JSTOR, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Searches were limited to English language articles focussing on EER topics such as engineering education transformation, engineering curriculum reform, Conceive Design Implement Operate (CDIO), active and collaborative learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, and internships. We limited our search to articles from 2010 and onwards as our focus was primarily on current articles.

The emerging picture of EER in Sub Sahara Africa

The picture emerging from this exercise is not flattering. Most of the EER papers that we discovered were predominantly from two countries only – South Africa and Nigeria. In fact, these two countries contributed over 80% of all the papers that we identified. Some countries were not represented at all, with only single digit numbers of publications from countries such as Ghana, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Just to be sure, we visited the web profiles of academics at various engineering institutions across Sub Sahara Africa, and our results seemed to confirm our database search – very few engineering academics in Sub Saharan Africa write and publish EER articles. Invariably, engineering academics up and down the region, when they do publish, they tend to focus on hardcore engineering and science research.

We also sifted through the papers that we had identified. A significant proportion of these papers were from individual academics writing on their own reforms of the course modules that they teach. Papers on programme-wide and institution-wide EER issues, for example, curriculum reform, appeared only in a couple of South African papers.

Take-home lessons

EER is virtually non-existent in Sub Saharan Africa, except in Nigeria and South Africa. In addition, most EER papers are single-authored, ostensibly from engineering education enthusiasts. Indeed, EER in Sub Saharan Africa appears only to be a hobbyist activity, with no discernible institutional or national strategy driving it.

What does this mean for Engineering Education in Sub Saharan Africa? This gives rise to several possibilities – the most pessimistic being that there is a dearth of national and institutional strategies aimed at improving the quality of Engineering Education in Africa. This would be sad, given the thousands of engineering graduates in Sub Saharan Africa who emerge every year from engineering institutions without the skills required by industry, and who are therefore destined to a life of joblessness or underemployment [See Mohamedbhai (2015): Improving Engineering Education in Sub-Saharan Africa]. A less pessimistic possibility is that engineering institutions in Sub Saharan Africa do care about the quality of Engineering Education, and do carry out periodic curriculum reviews and reforms, but they do not always write about their activities. This would then raise several other questions: To what extent are Engineering Education reforms in Sub Saharan Africa research-based? Do reforming engineering institutions in Sub Saharan Africa share best practice, and if so, how do they do so, and with whom do they share the information?

Agreed, this exercise that we carried out is akin to an aircraft passenger looking out of the window at 38 000 feet and trying to identify landscape features far down below. But even then, this would suggest that there are currently no Mount Kilimanjaros in the EER landscape of Sub Saharan Africa. Hopefully, however, there are emerging hills and mole hills of EER activity taking place in Sub Saharan Africa, although they are still too small to make an imprint on the international EER radar.