employer involvement in undergraduate projects: staff and student perspectives
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Employer Involvement In Undergraduate Projects: Staff And Student Perspectives
Abel Nyamapfene & Dawn Evans
12 April 2012
Project Overview
This project is part of a National HE STEM funded consortium project
by six South West of England universities to:
1.Explore innovative approaches to involving employers in the STEM undergraduate curriculum.
2.Investigate the transferability of approaches to employer-led experiential learning between different STEM disciplines and the adoption of multidisciplinary approaches by STEM departments
3.Promote opportunities for employers to get involved in the STEM undergraduate curriculum.
Specific Project Objectives
To compare and contrast the different types of employer-
involvement in undergraduate engineering projects from the
perspective of students and academics
To build a suitable analysis technique for evaluating projects with
employer-involvement
To identify potential barriers to employer-involvement in
undergraduate projects and to suggest recommendations on how to
avoid and overcome these barriers
Importance of Employer Involvement in Undergraduate Projects – Literature sources
Engineering academics generally agree that projects with employer-
involvement:
Offer great opportunities for students to be involved in rich,
challenging and meaningful educational project experiences
Enable students to work on finding engineering solutions to real
problems faced by industry.
Are highly motivational for the students, and eases the transition
from university to the workplace.
Typical Problems faced by Projects with Employer Involvement – Literature sources
Poor communication between the employer, academic and
student
Mismatch between the expectations of the three parties,
leading to deterioration in relationships and subsequent poor
project outcomes.
Legal problems arising out of issues such as intellectual
property rights.
Project Methodology
A mixed methods approach incorporating:
Documentary analysis of 2010/11 third year
individual projects
Student questionnaires
In-depth follow-up student interviews
Academic staff interviews
In-house Rating of Employer Involvement in Student Projects
Level of Industrial Involvement Rating
Company provides support fund and sets project 5
Company sets the project or sponsors students 4
Project set internally but company interested in the results. Named company contact
3
Possible industrial interest identified 2
No industrial link 1
Analysis of the 2010-11 Individual Engineering Student Projects
Industrial Involvement Rating
Project Distribution
Seniority Ranking of Academic Supervisors
Full Professor Associate Professor
Senior Lecturer
Lecturer
5 1 0 1 0 0
4 9 1 6 2 0
3 15 0 6 6 3
2 33 3 6 17 7
1 38 0 8 11 19
Observation: The distribution of academic seniority in the project rankings suggests that an academic’s level of research activity may contribute to more opportunities for
securing projects with higher industrial involvement.
INDEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH ACADEMICSIndepth interviews carried out with a lecturer, senior
lecturer
and associate professor:
Observations:
1.All three academics support industry-linked projects
2.Senior lecturer and associate professor regard industry-linked undergraduate projects primarily as a means of developing research links.
3.This suggests that for academics pedagogic benefits of industry-linked projects secondary to research benefits
Student Questionnaires
Student questionnaires handed out to final year MEng students
during a lecture session in October 2011.
Cohort is the one that carried out the third year individual
engineering student project in the previous academic year 2010-11.
70 questionnaires that were distributed:
- 35 were completed and returned
` - 10 of these were from students who had done industry-
linked projects
Responses of the 10 Students with Industry-linked projects (1):
Relationship with the industrial organisation:Good to excellent 6Neutral 3Poor 1
Relationship with the industrial organisation contact person :Good to excellent 6Neutral 4Poor 0
Responses of the 10 Students with Industry-linked projects (2):
Easy to initiating and maintaining contacts with industrial organisation:Agree: 9 Disagree: 1
NB: Student who disagreed was the same throughout
There were prior contacts between the engineering department and the industrial organisation:
Agree: 9 Disagree: 1
Willing to take up employment with the organisation on graduating Agree: 9 Disagree: 1
Student perspectives on skills acquisition
Interpersonal skills improved: Agreed All 10
Technical skills improved: Agreed - 8
hands-on activities adequate: Agreed - 5
project was well structured: Agreed - 8
Feedback was adequate: Agreed - 4 NB: Findings suggest that the level of interaction between the students and industrial organisation was adequate and meaningful.
INDEPTH INTERVIEW WITH DISGRUNTLED STUDENT
The student’s project involved developing a project idea that an
external non-corporate individual had brought.
Student did not see it as a project from industry, and he thought
the project was “rubbish”.
The student also felt that the project had contributed little to
employability
The student felt that the project had not motivated him, and that
was why he had not completed it
Closing remarks
Academics view industry-linked projects primarily
from a research perspective
Students generally happy with depth and conduct of
industry-linked projects
There is a need to manage student expectations if
disappointments are to be avoided later on.
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