Higher Education Ok
Higher Education Ok
Higher Education Ok
in engineering education
– A good practice guide
ISBN: 978-1-909327-14-6
© Royal Academy of Engineering 2016
Authors
Oliver Broadbent, Think Up
Ed McCann, Think Up
Acknowledgements
This report was funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering Education
and Skills Committee.
The authors would like to record their gratitude to the many people who have
contributed to this project and are grateful to the staff at the University of
Bath, University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London, University of Limerick,
University of Liverpool, University of Strathclyde, University College London,
and the Useful Simple Trust.
Contents
Executive summary.......................................................................................................................................5
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................................7
Current practice in industrial engagement .................................................................................... 8
> The challenges........................................................................................................................................ 10
Principles.......................................................................................................................................................... 12
Professional engineering institutions
> Principle one – Foster relationships between industry and academia................... 13
> Principle two – Coordinate industrial engagement activities...................................... 16
> Principle three – Open the archives............................................................................................. 18
Industry
> Principle four – Develop motivation for industrial engagement activities.......... 20
> Principle five – Make real materials and resources freely available......................... 24
> Principle six – Invest............................................................................................................................. 26
Academia
> Principle seven – Develop motivation and skills for engagement............................. 28
> Principle eight – Make strategic use of academics’ and industrialists’ time........ 30
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................... 33
Table of resources ...................................................................................................................................... 35
A Good Practice Guide
The first three principles are written for professional engineering institutions, and say
that they should foster relationships between industry and academia; they should
coordinate industrial engagement activities; and that they should use their archives to
support industrial engagement.
The next three principles say that industry, in turn, should develop staff motivation and
skill for engagement in engineering education; should make real materials and resources
freely available; and should invest in engagement activities.
The last two principles say that universities in turn should develop motivation and skill for
industrial engagement in engineering education among their staff; and they should make
strategic use of academics’ and industrialists’ time.
In the body of this guide, these principles are each explained in more depth and
accompanied by practical suggestions for implementation.
Four recent reports published by the Royal Academy of Engineering highlight the
need to improve the quality and scope of engineering education if we are to meet
the demands of students and employers for industry-relevant skills1–4. In its report
Engineering Graduates for Industry, the Academy emphasised how important it is that
engineering degrees should be “fit for the future” and highlighted the need for a radical
increase in the involvement of industry at national and local levels in engineering
education2. That report recognises that it is unrealistic to expect graduate engineers
to have all the knowledge and skills that industry requires “but it is fundamental that
graduates understand what other people do and how it all fits together”.
The purpose of this guide is to supplement the strategic guidance and case studies
provided in the previous studies with practical, workable suggestions for universities,
industry and professional engineering institutions to help them deliver and benefit
from effective industrial engagement.
The first part of this report gives a brief overview of the current state of industrial
engagement in undergraduate engineering education and identifies the key challenges
to the development of more effective relationships and engagement. The report then
sets out key principles, broadly applicable to most industrial engagement initiatives,
that can be adopted to overcome these challenges, and also provides specific
suggestions for enhancing particular types of intervention.
The arguments in this guide build on two previous Royal Academy of Engineering
guides by the same authors, Experience-led learning for engineers – a best practice
guide5 and The development of e-learning resources – a best practice guide 6. Together,
these reports show how the use of experience-led learning and the use of e-learning
technologies have a role to play in helping students develop industry-related skills,
and underpinning both of these approaches is effective industrial engagement.
To avoid repetition, this report makes references to many of the points made in these
previous reports, and so the three should ideally be read in conjunction.
Professor John Perkins, in his Review of Engineering Skills, also highlighted the
importance of effective employer engagement in higher education. We welcome
the work of the National Council for Universities and Business (NCUB) to make
employer engagement stronger across all subjects. NCUB will be hosting the advice
and guidance specific to engineering, which has been developed as part of the
Perkins Review 7.
References to online materials are provided in this guide. If the document is being
read onscreen then the hyperlinks in the text can be clicked on directly; for readers
with a printed version, web addresses are provided in the table of resources at the end.
Current practice in
industrial engagement
On the whole it is left to the universities to decide on curriculum content and the
educational techniques needed to achieve the required learning outcomes. Most
universities involve industry in one way or another in the delivery of their engineering
programmes. The common ways that industry is involved in undergraduate engineering
education are listed in Box 1 and key examples are described in more detail in
Boxes 2 to 13 found throughout the report.
At their best these initiatives are done well and highly effective; however, in the
experience of the authors, the quality and quantity of industrial engagement
initiatives remain highly variable. It is the opinion of the authors that this variability
can be attributed to a series of challenges that staff in universities, industry and
at PEIs encounter when developing such activities.
The challenges
01 – Appropriate motivation
›› While academic staff may work closely with industry on research, there is less
motivation to engage with industry in relation to education.
›› P
roject-work-focused industrialists may have little motivation to engage with
academia in relation to education.
›› A
ccreditation requirements offer an extrinsic motivator for industrial engagement,
but intrinsic motivators are less obvious.
›› T
he desire to graduate from university and start paying off debts soon may
discourage students from undertaking industrial placements as part of their
degrees2.
02 – Appropriate skills
›› Industrialists in practice don’t necessarily have the appropriate skills to make them
good educators.
›› A
cademics don’t necessarily have the right networking and entrepreneurial skills
necessary to develop high-impact industrial engagement initiatives.
›› A
cademics, industrialists and PEI staff don’t necessarily have the right skills to
disseminate the teaching materials produced.
04 – Cultural differences
›› Academics and industrialists account for their time differently: industrialists
typically account for their time on an hourly basis, whereas academics are usually
more able to organise their time as they see fit as long as they meet their research
and teaching objectives.
›› I ndustrialists don’t understand what university environments are like and are
often surprised that teaching is not necessarily the primary focus of activity.
05 – Organisation
›› Academic timetables are fixed, usually a long time in advance. This is a problem
especially for senior industrialists as they don’t know what they are going to be
working on so far in advance.
›› Industrialists often aren’t aware of the learning programme and how it is organised.
›› There are many industrial engagement initiatives, but not necessarily much
coordination, either at a university level or at a national level.
Principles
In this section we identify a series of principles that stakeholders in the
industrial engagement process can adopt when seeking to overcome
the challenges identified above. The principles are grouped according
to the stakeholder group to which they apply in the order: professional
engineering institutions, industry and academia.
Industry
Principle four – Develop motivation for industrial engagement activities
Principle five – Make materials and resources freely available
Principle six – Invest
Academia
Principle seven – Develop motivation and skills for engagement
Principle eight – Make strategic use of academics’ and industrialists’ time
Foster relationships
between industry
and academia
Professional engineering institutions In practice
(PEIs) are a natural meeting ›› Promote networking — Hold events designed to provide opportunities for academics
place between the academic and and industrialists to meet. These events could be specifically focused on opportunities
the industrial spheres, so these for educational collaboration, or they could have a more free-form agenda. Consider
institutions have an important facilitating events that aim to link up staff at similar stages in their careers.
role to play in fostering positive ›› Build a campaign — To help build momentum, staff motivation and funding, build a
relationships between the two. PEI campaign to illustrate to industry the benefits of industrial engagement in education.
staff are well-placed to identify and Make celebrating the success stories part of that campaign. Use newsletters and
introduce potential collaborators. social media channels to help raise awareness of new and existing initiatives. Offer
Their events and regional offices regular prizes that recognise the contributions of individuals and organisations.
provide good opportunities for ›› Make the most of student membership — Student membership of PEIs in itself
academics and industrialists to meet, can play an important part in preparing students for industry because it can make
and their extensive networks are students feel part of a community of practice and expose them to role models who
ideal for promoting and celebrating may demonstrate the professional behaviour that industry wants them to aspire to.
liaison initiatives and the individuals In addition, once students are involved with PEIs, they can play an important role in
who make them happen. seeding new ideas and relationships that will grow over time.
Most, if not all, PEIs already offer free or discounted student membership, but it is
important to make sure that students sign up and make the most of the benefits.
Make signing up the first thing students do when they arrive at university. Providing
strong support for graduate and student groups and networks of academic liaison
staff will also help to build and maintain active student membership. Also make the
most of the archive material to support learning (see Principle three).
›› Enhance the network — PEIs are often the hub of industrial engagement
networks. These networks often consist of dozens of direct relationships between
industrialists, academics and students brought together through the institution. In
the experience of the authors, the coverage of these networks is patchy, with some
parts of industry and academia being well-represented, and others absent.
PEIs should take steps to learn about and tap into the vast potential that their
networks offer. The first priority should be growing, training and motivating their
networks of liaison officers, both in industry and academia. An important area of
training should be in social media, where many of the new connections and networks
are being formed and awareness of these networks is patchy, often relying on bilateral
relationships. PEIs should take steps to learn about and harness the vast potential
social capital that they have through their members. Pay attention to managing
and keeping motivated networks of liaison officers in all universities and important
employers, and harness more informal links through active use of social media.
›› Link industrial liaison to accreditation and qualification — one way to encourage
engagement between industry and universities that some PEIs already use is to
recognise this sort of activity in qualifications for individuals (such as professional
qualification or fellowship) and in accreditation for teaching institutions.
›› Link experience to chartership — encourage student motivation to seek out work
experience and work placements by highlighting to them the contribution it can
make towards achieving professional registration.
for debate.
›› R
esearch competition based on an industrial problem – providing a
context for the competition; offering site visits or interviews with staff
to support research.
There are then a number of key ingredients in the design of the events
themselves:
›› Realistic learning environment — Part of the reality of deep-immersion
role-play events is the physical environment in which they take part. The
Constructionarium takes place in a specially created landscape complete
with river, gorge, lake and hills. The Big Rig:Nuclear new-build event takes Image courtesy of Think Up
place in a space designed to simulate a nuclear-licensed site, and in which
all participants, including staff, are expected to demonstrate ‘nuclear Nuclear Island Big Rig
The Nuclear Island Big Rig initiative brings industry
behaviours’. In the experience of the authors, the more real it looks, the and academia together to deliver transformative
more authentic the learning experience will be for the students. learning scenarios for engineering students.
At a Nuclear Island Big Rig event students are set the
›› Carefully tuned tasks — The briefs that the students are set need to be
challenge of building a mock-up of a mechanical
carefully thought through: on the one hand they should be challenging system under the simulated working constraints
in order to add a sense of excitement and jeopardy; on the other they of a nuclear licenced site.
should be achievable. One way to add an additional sense of jeopardy
is by introducing a competition element as, for example, is the case in
Formula Student.
An alternative to setting a brief is to use a project-based learning approach
(see Principle seven of the report Experience-led learning for engineers
for more information on taking this approach).
›› Blended support resources — Deep-immersion role-plays usually require
a blend of different support resources. The trick is to provide students with
the information they need using highly realistic means, for instance, using
real technical drawings or online project reporting systems – here the
ability of industry to supply real or realistic materials is very valuable.
›› killed facilitation — All staff facilitating deep-immersion role-plays need
S
to be carefully briefed by the coordinating team on the role they are taking
on, otherwise the experience can be compromised. The facilitation team
also needs to understand how to manage the mood of the participating
students: how to increase the pressure or ease off as appropriate;
how to hold back information or release it in order to help teams get
the task finished.
The final crucial step in running any large-scale deep-immersion role-play,
given the efforts and considerable expense of doing so, is to celebrate the
initiative and recognise the participation of all who made it happen.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
Image courtesy of Expedition
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
Constructionarium example
For over ten years, industry and academia have
been collaborating to deliver the Constructionarium,
a unique learning environment in which
undergraduate civil engineers are set the challenge
of building large-scale mock-ups of real engineering
structures using real plant, materials and processes.
Coordinate industrial
engagement activities
Industrial engagement in Were PEIs to set greater direction, it would help to make more effective use of academics’
engineering education tends to be and industrialists’ time and resources, it would help to raise the educational value of
based on linkages at a personal level initiatives across the board, and it would help to overcome the organisational challenges
rather than at an organisational or previously identified. If, as part of their coordination activity, PEIs helped individuals to
institutional level. Increasing the develop the necessary skills to support industrial engagement, the educational value of
number of industrial engagement these engagement activities would be further raised.
initiatives in engineering education
will inevitably increase the number of In practice
direct linkages. In the authors’ view ›› Coordinate the activities of visiting professors (VPs) — There are hundreds of
we should not want or expect to be visiting professors appointed from industry to academic institutions, either directly
able to coordinate all this activity at under bilateral arrangements or through schemes such as the Royal Academy of
the scale of individual initiatives but Engineering’s VPs programme. Since VPs are usually senior personnel from industry,
professional engineering institutions and they tend to liaise with senior members of teaching staff, VPs are perhaps the
(PEIs) should provide more high-level most obvious vector for influencing industrial engagement. To this end, PEIs should:
coordination. »» Identify VPs in their sector and what their activities are.
»» Identify appropriate themes for programmes of activity linked to availability
of funding.
»» Establish new VPs programmes as necessary to address themes not
currently covered.
»» Establish communities of practice in which best practice can be shared, perhaps
involving an annual conference (see below). Consider running a VPs blog that
syndicates activities of all the VPs in a given programme (blogging allows updates
to be much more frequent than a printed publication allows).
›› Run an annual conference — This conference would be exclusively dedicated to
industrial engagement in education, helping to set the agenda, identifying key issues,
promoting best practice, signposting resources and celebrating participation.
›› Offer training for engagement — PEIs are ideally placed to design and deliver
training to address key areas in which stakeholders in industrial engagement would
benefit:
»» Appropriate pedagogy — making sure that industrial engagement initiatives are
designed in such a way to support effective learning (for more information see
Principle one of the report Experience-led learning for engineers)
»» Networking — industrial liaison depends on individuals making new connections
outside of their usual networks. Networking like this is doesn’t come naturally to
all, so training in this area would support improved industrial engagement, helping
in particular to overcome the challenge of cultural differences described above.
»» Design of e-learning resources — while e-learning is key to growing the impact of
industrial engagement, according to the report The Development of e-learning
resources, many of those involved in designing engagement initiatives are ‘digital
immigrants’ rather than ‘digital natives’ and so need to raise their awareness and
skills in this capacity.
Open the
archives
To support their function as learned Archive material has an important role to play in industrial engagement. Getting
bodies, most PEIs maintain a access to the material itself is potentially very motivating for students, particularly
substantial archive of material going as university teaching staff often find it very difficult to give students access to real
back decades, if not more than a documents from engineering projects. Real material helps to put theory into context;
century, and employ a team of expert it helps students understand what they might be producing and what role they might
staff dedicated to cataloguing and play. Archive material also has the potential to reinforce the sense of belonging to a
disseminating it. Indeed, by including community of practitioners, which is an important part of the experience-led learning
the suggestions below in this guide, that supports developing skills for industry5.
the authors are not trying to tell
these experts how to do their jobs, It is therefore important that students have access to these materials, and equally that
rather to highlight to others involved students develop the habit of using them. Beyond the value of the archive material
in industrial engagement how to in its own right, archive material could form the basis of new academic–industry
make the most of the opportunities relationships, as the following suggestions demonstrate.
that these archives offer.
In practice
›› Invite the students in – Most PEIs already allow students to come and use their
library and archive resources. But the difference between ‘being able to’ and ‘actually
doing’ can often be large. Students often need plenty of encouragement so PEIs
should consider running initiatives to actively encourage students to make use of
their resources.
›› Attend IABs – One way to make more use of archive materials in teaching is for
archivists from PEIs to attend university industrial advisory boards to see how their
materials can fit into the curriculum.
›› Talk to the accreditors – Building on the previous point, archivists could also work
with the staff from their organisations to identify ways in which the archives could
support teaching of the engineering curriculum at universities.
›› Match-make – There may be an opportunity for archivists to forge a link between a
university and a company by identifying archive material that relates both to a specific
company and to a topic in the engineering curriculum. The material could form
the basis of a group project that representatives from that company could help to
facilitate for example; or alternatively the material could form the basis of a student
investigation into an aspect of that company’s work.
›› People like people – In the experience of the authors, one of the most appealing
aspects of archives is the stories of the individuals who made things – who did things.
Building on the previous point, the stories of engineers’ activities may also provide
the basis for a link between a university and a company, and provide a context for
helping undergraduates understand what engineers do in practice.
›› Encourage student research – PEI archive material could form part of the research
for a student project or dissertation.
›› Digitise – It is the author’s opinion that the single most effective way to maximise
the benefits that archives offer is to digitise the content and to make it freely available.
Approaches for commissioning, designing and operating digitised archives are covered
in detail in the report The Development of e-learning resources – a best practice guide6.
›› Get the training – In the authors’ view there is a need for a short training package
to prepare industrialists who are going to be involved in industrial engagement.
Whoever offers this training (Principle two of this report suggests it should be the
PEIs who do this), the authors believe it should cover the following points:
»» Awareness of different learning models — this topic is covered in much more depth
in Experience-led learning – a best practice guide. An alternative very helpful
resource is Felder’s paper Engineering Education: A tale of two paradigms12, which
describes the difference between constructivist and positivist learning models as
applied to engineering.
»» Motivating students — helping industrialists understand the role they can play
in motivating students (see point above on being clear about the benefits).
»» Feedback techniques — staff will often be invited to critique students’ work. There
are appropriate techniques for doing so of which industrialists should be aware.
»» Understanding the curricula — industrialists need to be able to get a quick
understanding of the overall curriculum to see how their contribution fits in.
Greater awareness of the curriculum may help industrialists identify additional
resources, case studies or experiences that they can bring to the classroom that
they might not otherwise have done.
»» Understanding systems — most universities now use some sort of virtual learning
environment for disseminating information and managing course work. These
tools could help overcome challenges of availability by supporting asynchronous
working, but many industrialists are likely to be unaware that these systems exist.
»» Find out student learner habits — study habits have changed radically, even in
the last five years. Industrialists returning to the classroom after many years are
likely to be quite surprised to see how different student learning habits now are
compared to when they were in education. For instance, many students now
work directly on a laptop, and in the experience of the authors, students’ first
port of call when faced with any sort of question is the internet, not a book.
What is important is that people coming into universities are prepared for
these different approaches.
»» How to disseminate — creating resources that can be widely disseminated is
important for building long-term effective industrial engagement (see Principle
six of this guide). This requires the use of various techniques, such as using
Creative Commons attribution, in which staff would most likely benefit
from training.
»» Support students in the workplace — as important as preparing industrialists
going into universities is the need for training to support students who are on
workplace-based learning schemes, such as work-experience placements or a
sandwich course. The workplace is a very rich learning environment but students
need guidance to help them make the most of these learning opportunities.
›› Create long-term relationships — Forming the relationships that enable industrial
engagement can take a lot of time and effort, which all needs to be repeated when
the relationship comes to an end. Industrialists should consider ways to make
their intervention last, recognising that they may not always be able to participate
themselves. One way to do this is to train up other staff members to deliver in future
what they are doing now. Another is to consider turning the intervention into an
e-learning resource.
›› Don’t duplicate — This guide recommends that PEIs play a role in coordinating and
signposting industrial engagement interventions to save effort for all involved.
For their part, industrialists should consult with PEIs to see who else is doing what,
and to see if there are materials or approaches that they can borrow and bulid on.
One way that departments can effectively support their student Image courtesy of Oliver Broadbent
engineering societies is ensure that their activities are properly archived.
This needs to be done in such a way as to not take away the initiative from CivSoc at Imperial College London
the students, but rather to provide them with a resource that will avoid An example of a student-led engineering society is
them making the same mistakes as predecessors. Part of that archiving CivSoc, Imperial College London’s civil engineering
society. CivSoc’s activities include arranging
process needs to include keeping track of lists of contacts, so that these can
site visits, organising talks from industrialists,
be maintained as part of the department’s broader industrial engagement liaison with professional engineering institutions,
strategy. Another way to help overcome organisational amnesia and to grow publication of Livic (see below) and the organisation
participation is to set up a society newspaper. Not only are newspapers a of an annual international trip, such as its visit to
good way to encourage widespread involvement, they also provide a lasting Paris, pictured.
record of what has been done in the past.
Finally, one of the most effective ways that student societies can get
support for themselves is to tap into recent graduate alumni networks
– even better if those alumni were themselves members of the society.
Graduates are often happy to return to their old universities to help support
Image courtesy of Oliver Broadbent
the sorts of initatives they were involved with themselves as students.
Livic at Imperial College
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
Livic is the civil engineering newspaper of
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities. CivSoc (see above). It was set up to give students
the opportunity to write about developments
in industry.
These groups are often run by teams of enthusiasts who commit large amounts
of time to making these activities happen. One of the ways that institutions
can support their groups is to ensure that the administrative burden that these
volunteers are subject to is kept to a minimum. Another is to provide these
groups with access to meeting room space in their buildings free of charge.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
›› Before they go – Ask students to think about what they want to get out
of the placement. Are there particular professional skills students want to
develop, or is there any particular topic that they could use the opportunity
to investigate?
›› K
eep a journal – Encourage students to keep some sort of record of their
experiences. Even a photo journal showing their workplace and the people
they worked with can provide a memory aid for reflective learning later on.
›› B
ring something back – Invite students to make a presentation on their
return to university about what they did on their placement. Better still, ask
students if they can get permission to bring in real documents or examples
that can be used to illustrate upcoming course material.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
In the view of the authors, one of the most important roles that an
industrial mentor can play is to help motivate students towards learning
what is useful and what might make them a better engineer rather than
just focusing on grades, which unfortunately in the university setting,
is the preoccupation of many students.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
›› U
se Creative Commons licensing — A cademics and students are rightly cautious
about what right they have to use other people’s material, especially given the tight
plagiarism rules that most universities have put in place. It is not enough therefore
for an industrialist to intend for material to be widely disseminated – she or he needs
to declare to others that they have permission to do this. The easiest way to do this
is using Creative Commons licensing, which uses a set of simple icons to show what
permissions originators of a document give to users and how they want their original
work to be attributed. The Creative Commons website has a handy tool that helps
authors choose a licence for their work, and then generates the relevant Creative
Commons licence mark for download and use in their document.
›› Help users search for materials – It is important that students get to find the
materials that industrialists have gone to the effort of making available. Adding the
appropriate meta-data to online resources will help make materials more findable.
Techniques such as ‘authorship’, a protocol that Google uses to link content with
authors to enable author legitimacy to be a factor that influences search results,
can also help to make content more findable. For more information on search engine
optimisation, use of meta-tags and authorship, see The Development of e-learning
resources – a best practice guide.
›› Disseminate high-quality resources – Students are much more likely to choose
high-quality resources, so if industrialists want their resources to go far, they need to
take the time to make them high quality.
›› Bring materials back from work placements — students who go into industry on
work experience or longer-term placement, as well as part-time students, will all have
access to real materials that could support learning in the classroom. Industrialists
should help students to identify what materials they can take back into the classroom
with them, and academic staff could ask students what materials they have seen
during their placements that could support teaching.
Invest
As has previously been expressed The prime beneficiaries of enhanced industrial engagement in engineering education
in this guide, many industrial are the engineering employers who stand to gain a cohort of graduates who are more
engagement initiatives are suited to their working environments. It stands to reason that it is industry that should
based on direct, often ad-hoc, invest. Of course, industry already does invest in industrial engagement in education,
relationships that exist between but to achieve higher quality and quantity of these initiatives, more investment
individuals. For engagement to is needed.
be sustained these initiatives,
far-reaching investment is needed In practice
to support training of the individuals ›› Invest in staff development — Principle one of this guide recommends that
involved, the creation of resources professional engineering institutions coordinate staff training for industrial
for wider dissemination, and the engagement; Principle five describes what that training should include. Investing
organisation and maintenance of in staff training for industrial engagement would not only benefit engineering
more sophisticated programmes education, it would benefit the companies as well as many of the skills needed for
of activity. effective engagement in education are valuable in the workplace as well.
›› Invest in staff time — Many staff give their own time for university engagement
activities, but giving staff an allowance of time to work on these interventions
would be fairer, given the benefits of engagement to the company concerned,
including staff development, networking and opportunities to recruit.
›› Invest in the development of e-learning resources — In today’s online world
internet users expect content to be free. The cost of developing e-learning
resources, therefore, can’t be met by usage revenue — industry needs to invest in
content development. Though content development costs can be considerable
given the high quality that users expect, the payoff can be greater impact in
terms of both reach and educational value. One model for investing in e-learning
resources that the authors have shown to be successful is annual sponsorship,
which is being used to support the development and operational costs of the
Engineering Mastermind, an online game designed to help engineers develop their
general engineering knowledge.
›› U
se industrial project boards – An effective way for attracting and managing
funding for large-scale industrial engagement initiatives is to set up a pan-industry
project board made up of representatives from leading companies, professional
engineering institutions, universities and sector skills councils. The role of such
a board is typically to help shape content, apply industry’s stamp of approval, and
critically, to encourage participants to invest in in the initiative. In the experience of
the authors, individual organisations are much more likely to invest in a particular
programme if they can see that others are doing the same.
›› Sponsor visiting teaching posts – Sponsoring visiting teaching roles in
universities is a high-profile way for companies to demonstrate their commitment
to engineering education. These positions also offer a significant way to influence
teaching outcomes. Sponsored posts enable long-term relationships to form
and for the quality of engagement initiatives to improve as participants learn
from experience.
University of Birmingham
‘Boris’ robotics exhibit from the University
Box 10 – Sponsorship and bursaries of Birmingham
Many companies, professional engineering institutions and charitable
trusts offer industrial sponsorship or bursaries to support students through
their undergraduate studies. Sponsorship and bursaries are often linked to
work placements at the organisation providing the funds. For example, the
National Instruments Scholarship programme is available to students
studying engineering, computer science or physics and awards them funds to
support students in their second year of study, an industrial mentor, access to
National Instruments software and hardware, and a year-long paid internship.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry
is involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
For many engineering departments, IABs are a major channel for industrial
engagement. Here are some practical suggestions for getting the most out
of an IAB.
See Box 1 on page 11 for a list of other common ways that industry is
involved in the delivering of engineering education in universities.
2. Royal Academy of Engineering. Engineering graduates for industry. (The Royal Academy of Engineering, 2010)
5. Broadbent, O., McCann, E. & McCann, D. Experience-led learning for engineers – a best practice guide. (2014)
6. Broadbent, O., McCann, D. & McCann, E. The Development of E-learning Resources for Engineers - a best
practice guide. (2014)
9. Joint Board of Moderators. Guidelines for accredited MEng degree programmes leading to chartered engineer.
(2009)
10. CIBSE. Guidance notes on the submission of documentation for accrediation of academic programmes.
11. Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers Academic Accreditation
Guidelines. (2010)
12. Felder, R. Engineering Education: A tale of two paradigms in Shaking Found. Geo-Engineering Educ.
(eds. McCabe, B., Pantazidou, M. & Phillips, D.) 9–14 (CRC Press/Balkema, 2012)
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