Background Although generic skills development is a concern of educational policy and accreditation bodies, little is known about how engineering students perceive generic skills in relation to their motivation for learning such skills. The development of these skills is often done only through ad hoc approaches, without a well-structured curriculum design framework. Disagreement over the nuances and interpretations of generic skills across disciplines makes framework design even more challenging.Purpose/Hypothesis To investigate students' perceptions of generic skills on a disciplinary basis, this article reports the development and validation of the Generic Skills Perception Questionnaire designed for investigating engineering students' perceptions of their level of competency in these skills.Design/Method The questionnaire was administered to 1,241 first-year engineering students from three universities in Hong Kong. Most of the questionnaire was items asking students to rate their perceived level of competency in 38 generic skills. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to examine the psychometric properties of the instrument for providing evidence on reliability and validity.Results Exploratory factor analysis resulted in eight scales. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the correlated eight-factor model and higher-order factor model provided an acceptable fit with the data. Cronbach's alpha values indicated that the scales were reliable.
ConclusionsThe questionnaire was reliable and valid. Findings from the questionnaire will help develop a conceptual framework facilitating the understanding of engineering students' generic skills development.
With recent advances in information technologies, a new mode of laboratory known as the "virtual laboratory" has begun to revolutionise engineering education. This development has generated discussion about the fundamental learning outcomes of laboratory training courses and, ultimately, an interest in the consequent changes to the student's learning experiences.This exploratory case study describes the initial phase of a research agenda that is focused on investigating the effectiveness of virtual laboratories in the Department of electrical and electronic engineering (eee) in a research-intensive university. The long-term goals of the agenda are to add to the literature of how effective virtual eee laboratories are (in terms of delivering specific learning outcomes, and also engaging and motivating students and teachers), and to discover whether they can ultimately become a substitute for traditional laboratory training by providing an equivalent and comparable learning experience for students.
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