Practice based learning for automotive engineering design students

The automotive industry combines a multitude of professionals to develop a modern car successfully. Within the design and development teams the collaboration and interface between Engineers and Designers is critical to ensure design intent is communicated and maintained throughout the development process. This study highlights recent industry practice with the emergence of Concept Engineers in design teams at Jaguar Land Rover Automotive group. The role of the Concept Engineer emphasises the importance of the Engineering and Design/Styling interface with the Concept engineer able to interact and understand the challenges and specific languages of each specialist area, hence improving efficiency and communication within the design team. Automotive education tends to approach design from two distinct directions, that of engineering design through BSc courses or a more styling design approach through BA and BDes routes. The educational challenge for both types of course is to develop engineers and stylist's who have greater understanding and experience of each other's specialist perspective of design and development. The study gives examples of two such courses in the UK who are developing programmes to help students widen their understanding of the engineering and design spectrum. Initial results suggest the practical approach has been well received by students and encouraged by industry as they seek graduates with specialist knowledge but also a wider appreciation of their role within the design process.

Engineering education research - the UK perspective at a time of change

Engineering education in the United Kingdom is at the point of embarking upon an interesting journey into uncharted waters. At no point in the past have there been so many drivers for change and so many opportunities for the development of engineering pedagogy. This paper will look at how Engineering Education Research (EER) has developed within the UK and what differentiates it from the many small scale practitioner interventions, perhaps without a clear research question or with little evaluation, which are presented at numerous staff development sessions, workshops and conferences. From this position some examples of current projects will be described, outcomes of funding opportunities will be summarised and the benefits of collaboration with other disciplines illustrated. In this study, I will account for how the design of task structure according to variation theory, as well as the probe-ware technology, make the laws of force and motion visible and learnable and, especially, in the lab studied make Newton's third law visible and learnable. I will also, as a comparison, include data from a mechanics lab that use the same probe-ware technology and deal with the same topics in mechanics, but uses a differently designed task structure. I will argue that the lower achievements on the FMCE-test in this latter case can be attributed to these differences in task structure in the lab instructions. According to my analysis, the necessary pattern of variation is not included in the design. I will also present a microanalysis of 15 hours collected from engineering students' activities in a lab about impulse and collisions based on video recordings of student's activities in a lab about impulse and collisions. The important object of learning in this lab is the development of an understanding of Newton's third law. The approach analysing students interaction using video data is inspired by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, i.e. I will focus on students practical, contingent and embodied inquiry in the setting of the lab. I argue that my result corroborates variation theory and show this theory can be used as a 'tool' for designing labs as well as for analysing labs and lab instructions. Thus my results have implications outside the domain of this study and have implications for understanding critical features for student learning in labs. Engineering higher education is well used to change. As technology develops the abilities expected by employers of graduates expand, yet our understanding of how to make informed decisions about learning and teaching strategies does not without a conscious effort to do so. With the numerous demands of academic life, we often fail to acknowledge our incomplete understanding of how our students learn within our discipline. The journey facing engineering education in the UK is being driven by two classes of driver. Firstly there are those which we have been working to expand our understanding of, such as retention and employability, and secondly the new challenges such as substantial changes to funding systems allied with an increase in student expectations. Only through continued research can priorities be identified, addressed and a coherent and strong voice for informed change be heard within the wider engineering education community. This new position makes it even more important that through EER we acquire the knowledge and understanding needed to make informed decisions regarding approaches to teaching, curriculum design and measures to promote effective student learning. This then raises the question 'how does EER function within a diverse academic community?' Within an existing community of academics interested in taking meaningful steps towards understanding the ongoing challenges of engineering education a Special Interest Group (SIG) has formed in the UK. The formation of this group has itself been part of the rapidly changing environment through its facilitation by the Higher Education Academy's Engineering Subject Centre, an entity which through the Academy's current restructuring will no longer exist as a discrete Centre dedicated to supporting engineering academics. The aims of this group, the activities it is currently undertaking and how it expects to network and collaborate with the global EER community will be reported in this paper. This will include explanation of how the group has identified barriers to the progress of EER and how it is seeking, through a series of activities, to facilitate recognition and growth of EER both within the UK and with our valued international colleagues.

Kompetencia alapú, output orientált oktatás az ideális foglalkoztathatóság érdekében

A kutatási projektünk tanulmánysorozata a magyar gazdaság fejlődésének különböző gazdaságfejlesztési útjait vizsgálja 2020-ig, amelyben a foglalkoztathatóság kérdése kulcs szerepet kapott. Jelen tanulmányunkban arra a kutatási kérdésre keressük a választ, hogy milyen oktatási rendszerre lenne szüksége a magyar gazdaságnak ahhoz, hogy az említett 2020-ig megvalósítható különböző gazdaságfejlesztési utak számára, biztosítani tudja a megfelelő mennyiségű és minőségű emberi erőforrást. A kutatási kérdés megválaszolásának érdekében bemutattuk az oktatási rendszer értékteremtési logikáját, a kompetencia alapú, outputorientált oktatás koncepcióját, a jelenlegi oktatási rendszert és annak kialakulását a rendszerváltás óta, valamint a gazdaságfejlesztési utak megvalósulásához készített számításainkat. A magyar oktatási rendszer, annak stacioner fejlődése esetén nem lesz képes még a stacioner gazdaságfejlesztési út (átlagosan évi 1%-os GDP növekedés 2020-ig) emberi erőforrás szükségletének a biztosítására sem, nemhogy az ennél magasabb GDP növekedéssel járó ipari termelésen, vagy gazdasági szolgáltatásokon nyugvó különböző szcenáriók szükségletének biztosítására. A diplomások túlképzésének a hiedelme megalapozatlan, nem a diplomások mennyiségével van a probléma, mivel belőlük lesz a legnagyobb hiány a különböző gazdaságfejlesztési pályák alapján, hanem maximum azok minősége vethet fel kérdéseket. Ahhoz, hogy a gazdasági növekedésünk mögé az emberi erőforrás hazánkban megfelelő minőségű és mennyiségű legyen egy teljesen új koncepció szükséges az oktatással kapcsolatban. Be kell vezetni a kompetencia alapú, output orientált oktatási modellt, amelynek irányításában a munkaerőpiac szerepét jelentősen meg kell erősíteni, és az át-, és továbbképzések területének hangsúlyát jelentősen növelni kell. Mindezek hiányában, vagy az óhajtott gazdasági növekedés nem lesz megvalósítható, vagy fél milliós nagyságrendű képzett munkaerő importjára fog Magyarország rászorulni. ________ The working papers of our research project analyze the development paths of the Hungarian economy until 2020, where employability is one of the cornerstones of the research. The research question addressed in this paper is what kind of educational system does Hungary need if we want to provide the needed human resources for the mentioned development paths until 2020. To answer the research question we introduced the value creation logic of the educational system, the concept of competency based output oriented education, today’s educational system and its 20 years history and our calculations for the development paths. The Hungarian educational system with its stationer development will not be able to provide the needed human resources to the stationer economic development path (average 1% GDP growth until 2020), not to mention the more productive manufacturing based or service based scenarios. The belief of overeducation in higher education is unfounded, the graduates will have the highest shortage according to the development paths, however their quality could raise some questions. To provide the needed quality and quantity in human resources for the economic development we need to implement a radically new educational concept, the competency based output oriented educational system, where the control of labor market and the emphasis of retraining, development as well as life-long learning has to be significantly strengthened. Without these either the desired growth will not be achievable or we should import around half million trained worker to Hungary.

A kreativitás megítélése a munkaerőpiacon (Creativity from view of job market)

A cikk két, felsőoktatásban dolgozó oktató és kutató törekvése arra, hogy feltérképezze a frissen végzett egyetemi hallgatókkal szemben, a munkaerőpiac oldaláról érkező kreativitással kapcsolatos elvárásokat. Az alapötlet egy EU-kreativitáskutatásból nőtt ki, melyben magyar középiskolai tanárok is közreműködtek. A szerzők kutatásukba beépítettek egy válaszokat tartalmazó adatbázist (337 fő). Ezt követően generáltak egy másik mintát, amely az egyetemi hallgatókat fedte le (292 fő). A lánc harmadik elemeként on-line formában és személyes lekérdezéssel 112 HR-szakember véleményét kérdezték meg a kreativitás fontosságával, mérhetőségével, az ötletet adó EU-projekt kreativitással kapcsolatos állításaival és a kreativitás definíciójával kapcsolatban. Cikkük a válaszok kvantitatív feldolgozásának eredményeit ismerteti. ______ The paper is the product of a professor’s and a researcher’s (both working in higher education) aim to determine the expectations of the job market as regards creativity in fresh graduates. The idea for this came from an EU creativity study which had included Hungarian high school teachers. The authors have integrated the database (337 persons) of these teachers’ answers into the study. They also generated a second sample that covered university students (292 persons). As a third element, the authors assessed the opinion of 112 HR managers online and in person as regards the importance and measurability of creativity, as well as their views on the statements pertaining to and definition of creativity as given in the EU creativity project. The paper presents the results of the quantitative analysis of the responses.