Embedding Enterprise in Engineering

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Handscombe ◽  
Elena Rodriguez-Falcon ◽  
Eann A. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Business Schools ◽  
The Other ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Teaching Programme ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The University

A great deal of enterprise teaching is carried out in business schools and has been for many years. The challenge of the UK's Science Enterprise Challenge was to extend enterprise teaching more thoroughly to science and engineering students. While some of the centres launched under the initiative developed the activity of business schools, there were notable exceptions. This paper focuses on the attempts to implement the challenges of teaching enterprise to engineering students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. This was one of the most successful departmental interventions of the White Rose Centre for Enterprise (WRCE), formed in 1999 as part of the UK Science Enterprise Challenge initiative. WRCE's remit, like that of the other science enterprise centres, was to increase enterprise learning and entrepreneurship, thus bringing about a ‘cultural change’ in those universities involved in the collaboration. WRCE's approach was to embed enterprise in the teaching programme of the science and engineering departments. The general propositions of WRCE are reviewed in the light of the activities within the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Some detailed qualifications of those propositions arise, with strong emphasis on the importance of pedagogic approaches and sequence of content.

Embedded Enterprise Learning: About, Through, For and From

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Handscombe ◽  
Elena Rodriguez-Falcon ◽  
Eann A. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Business School ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Teaching Approaches ◽  
School Students ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Effective Learning ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
White Rose ◽  
The Uk

Much enterprise teaching is carried out in business schools. A number of approaches are identified and their appropriateness for non-business school students reviewed. A particular focus is placed on science and engineering students and White Rose Centre for Enterprise (WRCE), formed in 1999 as part of the UK Science Enterprise Challenge initiative. Its remit was to increase enterprise learning and entrepreneurship activity, thus bringing about a ‘cultural change’. WRCE emphasizes the need to make learning ‘real’ for the student and to weave an enterprise strand through the full course of study. The findings support the argument that a combination of teaching approaches and the embedding of enterprise within a discipline subject is needed for effective learning to take place. This paper makes observations on the experiences in the White Rose Universities (Leeds, Sheffield and York). An enterprise learning framework is proposed and described in the context of international variations.

scholarly journals Development and delivery of a work experience week programme for mechanical engineering

2020 ◽  
pp. 030641902098104
Author(s):  
A Gonzalez-Buelga ◽  
I Renaud-Assemat ◽  
B Selwyn ◽  
J Ross ◽  
I Lazar
Keyword(s):  
Work Experience ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Legal Term ◽  
Stage 4 ◽  
Engineering Design Problem ◽  
Hands On ◽  
University Of Bristol ◽  
The University

This paper focuses on the development, delivery and preliminary impact analysis of an engineering Work Experience Week (WEW) programme for KS4 students in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (CAME) at the University of Bristol, UK. Key stage 4, is the legal term for the two years of school education which incorporate GCSEs in England, age 15–16. The programme aims to promote the engineering profession among secondary school pupils. During the WEW, participants worked as engineering researchers: working in teams, they had to tackle a challenging engineering design problem. The experience included hands-on activities and the use of state-of-the-art rapid prototyping and advanced testing equipment. The students were supervised by a group of team leaders, a diverse group of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students, technical staff, and academics at the School of CAME. The vision of the WEW programme is to transmit the message that everybody can be an engineer, that there are plenty of different routes into engineering that can be taken depending on pupils’ strengths and interests and that there are a vast amount of different engineering careers and challenges to be tackled by the engineers of the future. Feedback from the participants in the scheme has been overwhelmingly positive.

scholarly journals Measuring the Success of Mathematics and Statistics Support Sessions at UWS

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andisheh Bakhshi ◽  
Wan Rinwi Mekwi ◽  
Kenneth Charles Nisbet ◽  
Alan James Walker
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
The West ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The University ◽  
High Degree

Following a review of the provision of mathematics and statistics support across Scottish Higher Education Institutions, academics at the University of the West of Scotland initiated weekly mathematics and statistics support sessions. These sessions were open to all students and staff across the institution, but primarily aimed at the science and engineering students with a high degree of numerate work in their study programmes. After two years of operation, previous attendees and students within key demographics were canvassed on their knowledge of, and opinion of, these support sessions. Four key points were uncovered: advertising of the existence of the sessions should be increased; the use of PhD students overseeing the sessions should be investigated; the centralisation of the sessions should be investigated; and more formal tutorial engagement should be encouraged.

scholarly journals Understanding The Text Content: Applying Asking – Question Technique in English Text for Mechanical Engineering Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-55
Author(s):  
Norita Prasetya Wardhani ◽  
Muhammad Mujtaba Mitra Zuana
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
English Text ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Question Mark ◽  
Field Note ◽  
Reading Text ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Text Content ◽  
The University

Purpose - The study aims to observe the students ' skills in reading text with the instrument asking and writing the summary results read the text. Design/methodology/approach - To explain the process and the result of students’ writing wrote everything they saw in the class in field notes. Natural design and the phenomenon (descriptive qualitative) were also noted in the field note helping to analyze the data easily. The participants of this study were from mechanical engineering students, 53 students. Findings - The result showed many students could answer the question given and write a summary of the text having been read. Originality/value - Although this research is conducted at the university, the teachers, tutors, and parents to familiarize students or children with questions from the beginning six questions using WH-question mark. This is to train you to ask critically later when you become older. Because actually, the basic question with the WH-question mark is, directing students to take philosophical views. Paper type – Research paper

scholarly journals Educating Engineering Students in the Arts

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Tallman
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Elective Course ◽  
The University

The presentation will discuss a third-year engineering elective course, Engineering and Science inthe Arts, offered by the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. The presentation will detail the unique course deliverables, which require the engineering students to, first, create original works of art, and, secondly, to explain how these works connect to engineering and/or science. A key objective in the course was that the students eradicate the boundaries separating engineers and artists, and this presentation will consider the course’s success in this regard.

scholarly journals UNDERGRADUATE WRITING ASSIGNMENTS IN ENGINEERING: TRACKING ATTRIBUTE 7 IN TWO ACCREDITATION CYCLES

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Marcynuk ◽  
Anne Parker
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
National Study ◽  
Writing Assignments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Course Syllabi ◽  
University Of Manitoba ◽  
The University ◽  
Written Assignments

This paper reports on two iterations of our study of course syllabi in the Faculty of Engineering, University of Manitoba. The first iteration was part of a national study investigating the writing demands placed on students in a variety of disciplines, including those in the Social Sciences and the Humanities as well as Engineering. This first iteration followed an accreditation visit and the Faculty’s introduction of the C.E.A.B. graduate attributes and outcome-based assessment. Although one would expect Engineering to have far fewer written assignments than these other disciplines, such was not always the case. For example, the national study captured results for Political Science that closely matched those for Mechanical Engineering; Political Science students typically wrote, on average, 2.3 written assignments in year 2 of their program, 2.4 written assignments in year 3, and 4.2 written assignments in year 4, while Mechanical Engineering students wrote 4, 3 and 4.2 written assignments in those same years. Such a finding suggested that more writing was happening in the Faculty of Engineering than we might realize – and quiteapart from that done in the mandatory communication class. So, our second iteration of the study followed another accreditation cycle, but this time we focused solely on the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Manitoba. In this second iteration, our goal was to refresh the data so that we could clarify how Attribute 7, “communication skills,” is being met in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Manitoba.  

scholarly journals Creativity in Design Engineers: Attitudes, Opinions and Potentially Influential Factors – Part II

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omid Mirzaei ◽  
Paul Neufeld ◽  
Jade Knoblauch ◽  
Jessica Gerbrandt ◽  
Mark Runco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
The Other ◽  
Measurement Tool ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Design Engineers ◽  
College Of Engineering ◽  
The University

.Abstract – In the latter half of 2015, a survey looking at attitudes and beliefs about creativity was distributed on the campus of the University of Saskatchewan. Over 2000 responses were gathered, including more than 200 in the College of Engineering. Initial quantitative results from this study were reported in 2016 in Neufeld et al [2].  In terms of the methods used in the study, as discussed in Neufeld et al [2], an online pilot survey was distributed to students and faculty from a variety of the Colleges at the University. Survey questions probed respondents’ affinity for creativity, their personality characteristics, their opinions on state, trait and skill-based viewpoints on creativity, and demographic details.  The first part of the survey was a validated Creative Attitudes and Values measurement tool (part of the Runco Creativity Assessment Battery (rCAB)© 2012), as discussed in Acar and Runco [1]. This tool consists of 25, 5-point Likert scale items. Of these 25 items, 15 and 10 were indicative and contraindicative items, respectively. Contraindicative items were reverse coded so that they could be used along with the indicative ones. Both past research and our results showed good inter-item reliability scores for this measurement tool.  In Neufeld et al [2] we presented results covering all of the closed-form, quantitative questions along with some correlational calculations with the rCAB scores. The focus of the current paper is on the qualitative results, as well as on a factor analysis of the rCAB questions.  The factor analysis was quite successful. We used SPSS and forced a correlation of items, reducing to three factors. We have just over 29% of variance accounted for, with 10% non-redundant residuals. We have strong anti-correlation between one factor and the other two, and no correlation between the other two. These results will be compared to those of the rCAB authors [3].  As for the qualitative data, we asked several open-ended questions to probe how respondents defined creativity, whether they regarded it as a positive behavior, as well as how they felt about creativity in terms of it being a skill, trait and/or state. For example, pairs of questions asked when creativity is difficult and easy, when it should and should not be used, and when it grows and diminishes. For each of the 9 questions that had open-ended answers, concepts were extracted from individual responses. Concepts were then grouped into themes. Themes and concepts were compared across questions and were aligned. Responses were then coded for concepts and themes. At this point, the text data could be quantitatively examined. This paper presents those results, and discusses the implications of the concepts, themes, and their statistics for how we talk about creativity, and how we can teach it. Comparisons will be made between the results from engineering students and staff versus non-engineers.  This paper completes the first level of evaluation of the results of this initial survey focused on attitudes and beliefs about creativity. Future work will focus on examining correlations between the results of different questions, including the rCAB scores.  

scholarly journals 'You've been frameworked': evaluating an approach to digital and information literacy at the Open University

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Reedy ◽  
Robin Goodfellow
Keyword(s):  
Information Literacy ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Middle Managers ◽  
Skills Development ◽  
Learning Design ◽  
Digital Skills ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The University ◽  
Staff Engagement

This article explores the effectiveness of the Open University's (OU's) Digital and information literacy (DIL) framework (Reedy and Goodfellow, 2012) in promoting the integration of digital skills into modules and qualifications - a key strategic priority for the university - and in contributing to cultural change in the digital practices of teachers and learners - a key aim for the UK HE sector as a whole. We trace the history of digital and information literacy in the OU curriculum and elsewhere, leading up to the development of the framework. Four sets of interviews tell the story of academic and library staff engagement with it. These case studies are supplemented by two further interviews giving the perspective of OU middle managers responsible respectively for learning design and digital and information literacy development. We evaluate the success of the framework, and suggest how it might be further developed in future. Conclusions point strongly towards the need to involve students in shaping their own skills development, as found in other recent research (for example, Jisc, 2011a; 2011b).

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