Student and Teacher Perceptions of Transferable Skills in Engineering in relation to Learning Outcomes, Delivery and Assessment

Dr Chan, Cecilia Ka Yuk   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Dr Murphy Mike   (Co-Investigator)

25

2009-04-10

2011-05-09

120000

Student and Teacher Perceptions of Transferable Skills in Engineering in relation to Learning Outcomes, Delivery and Assessment

Assessment, Critical thinking, Key-skills, Lifelong learning, Student Engagement, Transferable Skills

Others - Education

200811159015

Seed Fund for PI Research – Basic Research

2008

Completed

Providing academic excellence in teaching is an essential part of any degree course in higher education. Increasingly though, employers are looking for more than in-depth knowledge and understanding of relevant subject discipline from their recruits (Bertelsen and Chadha, 1999). They are now looking for well-rounded graduates who do not just excel in their disciplines but on a variety of broader subjects and skills such as communication, teamwork, initiatives, problem-solving, self and time management and lifelong learning; ""we are increasingly articulate about what we expect from our university students. We expect graduates to be able to manipulate subject knowledge critically and analytically, argue effectively and reflectively, organise their study and time, work well in groups and so on"" Staddon (2002). Most of the business leaders commented that they could find employees who have ""hard skills"", that is the capability to fulfill the discipline related tasks, but many potential hires lack the ""soft skills"" that a company needs for driving forward. In a world where discipline specific knowledge rapidly becomes obsolete, it means employees need to upgrade their hard skills regularly as hard skills would only have a short shelf live, thus employees with good lifelong learning skills and positive attitudes towards learning are preferred. This is true even in professional careers such as engineering, science and related areas. Sharma and Trankina (1995) stated that, in an increasingly competitive market, even scientific and technical specialists find that they need their ancillary personal transferable skills to thrive in their chosen career. All this is evidenced by the external forces from Government whom in turn have been lobbied by employer demands to introduce key-skills development strategy in higher education. Numerous white papers, from the Council of the European Union (2001) to the Dearing Report in UK (1997) and the recently addressed issue on ""Knowledge Transfer"" by the University Grant Committee (2007) in Hong Kong have impacted significantly on the need for undergraduates to be better prepared for the world of work in order to ensure international competitiveness towards a knowledge-based economy. Of course, it is not merely about making students more employable, it is about making students more capable. Given that these days a significant proportion of students are likely to enter employment unrelated to their primary degree discipline, it is our duty to ensure the students possess certain aspects of the skills portfolio which are transferable regardless of discipline when they complete college. Despite the assumption that ‘transferable’ skills are part and parcel of a graduate’s portfolio and the skills agenda has been at the forefront of higher education provision for some time, there is a lack of information about the extent to which such skills may be perceived by students to be valuable and similarly by teachers. There is certain amount of haziness for both students and teachers in their perceptions on key-skills - the awareness, the understanding and the delivery of learning and the assessment of such skills. The discrepancy between student and staff perceptions on the skill-set are vitally important to ensure their expectations are aligned. Some evidences on students’ and teachers perceptions were found on a small scale by Haigh and Kilmartin (1999) in the geography discipline areas at the Oxford Brookes University and by Burke, Jones and Doherty (2005) in the sport area at the University of Luton, however, most key-skills researches are empirical studies on development work with little research on how to assess key-skills and how it affects student engagement (Chadha and Nicholls, 2006). Transferable skills are not addressed enough in higher education (Atlay and Harris, 2000) and it is argued that course structure and delivery methods need to be radically rethought and redesigned for the skills agenda to be sufficiently tackled. There is a lack of research to support methodologies aimed at promoting optimal transfer of skills to work environments – the linkage between the nature of the learning environments that may be provided, and the types of outcomes that are purported to accrue. It is important to remember key-skills are not by tradition part of a degree curriculum. Many academic professors do not actually have the personality or skill-sets to demonstrate such wisdom (Chan, 2005). Often the learning methods are not relevant to the skill-sets they try to teach or not related to authentic examples, there is little coherent link between course outcomes, methodology and assessments. In addition, students are often not explicitly explained what the learning outcomes of such skills deliver. Indeed, despite widespread efforts to address the skills agenda, there is a dearth of empirical evidence to support the efficacy of the initiatives that have been adopted particularly on student motivation and engagement in relation to the topic, a lack of research about the issue from the student perspectives. In this proposed research project, we seek to address some of the concerns raised above, specifically in the engineering discipline, we aim to: 1. Assess students’ perceptions of transferrable skills acquired during their undergraduate degree programmes in the engineering discipline. a. The awareness – What do they know about transferable skills? b. The learning outcomes – What types of transferable skills are most valuable and important to them and why? c. The practice – How are the transferable skills being taught in the engineering degree? d. The assessment – How are the transferable skills being assessed in the engineering degree? e. Type of practices preferred – Embedded, integrated or stand-alone courses? f. Student engagement – Do they find the teaching on transferable skills engaging? 2. Evaluate teachers’ perceptions of transferrable skills in the engineering programmes a. The awareness – What do they know about transferable skills? b. The learning outcomes – What types of transferable skills are most valuable and important to the students and why? c. The practice – How are the transferable skills being taught in the engineering degree? d. The assessment – How are the transferable skills being assessed in the engineering degree? e. Type of practices preferred by the students – Embedded, integrated or stand-alone courses? f. Student engagement – Are the teaching activities on transferable skills engaging for the students? 3. Investigate the discrepancy between student and staff perceptions on the skill-set, including the alignment of the skills’ learning outcomes, the learning practice and the assessment of transferable skills in the duration of the programme. 4. Evaluate the perceived effectiveness of the strategies adopted in respect to learning transfer, student engagement and the desirability of adding value to the undergraduate engineering programmes in this manner; Establish the value which students themselves place on embedded, integrate and stand-alone teaching approaches for developing their transferable skills. 5. Study the effectiveness on the different type of assessment methods used to assess transferable skills. The findings from the project will inform us on what is important to the students and the discrepancy between students and teachers’ perceptions on key-skills so to align their expectations in their learning and teaching. In fact, if students are to be successful, we must refocus the curriculum to prepare students to third level learning, to help them acquire the skills to navigate a complex organisation, and in so doing, to embrace processes of learning, personal development and career planning for life at university and beyond graduation.