Relationships between civil engineering students’ learning approaches and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality

BACKGROUND: Deakin University graduated its first cohort from four-year undergraduate civil engineering course/program in 2012. The internal annual Course Experience Survey, which has been running annually since 2012, targets to identify the graduating students’ learning approaches and students’ perceptions of the curriculum and teaching quality. Literature suggests that students’ learning outcomes can be achieved more efficiently when the students’ perceptions of curriculum and teaching quality are closely aligned with their learning approaches. Where the students’ approaches to learning and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality are mismatched, a series of frustrations can result for the students that may not only negatively impact their learning achievement but also their learning experience.
PURPOSE OR GOAL: This study explores the relationships between students’ learning approaches and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality in an undergraduate civil engineering program/course. This will help understand whether the curriculum and teaching quality provided by the university have actually accommodated ‘all’ enrolled students in the similar way.
APPROACH: To uncover these relationships, this study adopts questionnaire survey approach to collect response data over a two year period by asking students about their perception through a series of statements. 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree) is developed and responses are collected. The responses are then statistically analysed in order to uncover the relationships between students’ learning approaches and their perception of curriculum and teaching quality provided by the university.
DISCUSSION: Deep learners and surface learners had a statistically different perception of curriculum and teaching quality. These results contradict the assumption that learners will have uniform preferences on the curriculum, teaching quality and the way they deal with the demands of specific learning situations. Anecdotal belief that ‘good course/program curriculum and good teaching approaches are good for all students and vice-versa’ may not be strictly true for contemporary heterogeneous student cohorts.
RECOMMENDATIONS/IMPLICATIONS/CONCLUSION: This finding highlights the challenge for curriculum designer to design appropriate course curriculum and teaching staff to implement efficient teaching strategies that benefit both surface and deep learners, who are usually enrolled together. It may be beneficial to provide diversity and flexibility in the curriculum and teaching approaches (rather than a uniform approach). However, this may demand additional resources and may also be questioned for equity and consistency of education. It is also important to note that due to relatively a small dataset, these results may not be generalised.

Graduating Students' Perceptions of Learning Design in an Undergraduate Engineering Course

BACKGROUNDUndergraduate Civil Engineering Course at Deakin University, Australia is relatively a new course. It graduated its second main cohort in 2013. Since its beginning in 2012, this study has been running an internal annual Course Experience Surveys targeted at uncovering the graduating students’ perceptions on three components of contemporary learning system provided by Deakin University learning design, learning environment and the human factor. Learning design covers the learning curriculum, learning resources, learning activities and learning supports; learning environment includes physical environment, virtual environment and psychosocial environment; and human factor includes learners, facilitators/teachers and help/support staff and their culture. There is a common agreement among educators in higher education that these three components of learning system should interact and complement each other in order to maximise student learning. This paper coversonly learning design aspect of the overall surveys from 2012 and 2013.PURPOSEThe aim of this study is to analyse the students’ perceptions of learning design provided by Deakin University to its undergraduate civil engineering students in 2012 and 2013. This will help track down the progresses in different aspects of learning design and to understand whether the learning design provided by the institution have actually helped students in their learning and met their learning expectations.DESIGN/METHODThis study adopts questionnaire approach to collect original data by asking students about their perceptions of learning design provided by the institution. 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire survey (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree) is developed and responses are collected. The responses are then statistically analysed in order to uncover the students’ perceptions of learning design provided by the university.RESULTSThe statistical analysis shows that the graduating students in both 2012 and 2013 did not perceive some important aspects of the learning design of the undergraduate civil engineering program/course as good as they expected. Moreover, in line with the shift in the learning design paradigm from content-centric to more inclusive learning design where soft skills, self-directed learning skills and research skills are incorporated, graduating students clearly perceived these changes. However, respondents’ perceptions on some components of learning design got slightly down in 2013 compared with 2012 particularly the ‘learning resources’, ‘learning activities’ and ‘learning supports’.CONCLUSIONSThe shift in the learning design paradigm of the undergraduate civil engineering program/course at Deakin University from teacher-centric to student-centric between 2012 and 2013 has not been perceived by students positively as expected. Students have clearly indicated that they prefer improved curriculum, quality learning resources, customised learning activities and additional learning supports in order to successfully implement student-centric learning design.