Interdisciplinary units such as operations management are integral components of undergraduate education and their assessment methodologies immensely influence the attitudes of students, especially for engineering programmes that are accredited by external professional institutions. Users of the different forms of dominant assessments (mainly essays and multiple choice questions) often present very compelling arguments for their preferences. For example, essays are sometimes described as having the capabilities to assess deep learning but have limited coverage, while multiple choice questions (MCQs) can provide immense coverage but more suitable for assessing superficial learning. In addition to the costs attributable to their management (especially grading, compilation and collation of scores), it is very challenging if not impossible to achieve a perfect grading consistency with traditional essay-type assessments, especially when dealing with large cohorts. This is perhaps why the current body of knowledge clearly indicates that no single form of assessment is all encompassing, thereby paving ways for hybridization of multiple forms, so that the strength(s) of one type can adequately compensate for the weakness(es) of others. Based on these premises, the current article shares experiences related to the development and deployment of a hybrid assessment framework for an operations management unit delivered to 3rd year mechanical, aerospace and civil engineering students at the university of Manchester, UK. The framework comprises of 4 main classes of assessments — short zero weight independent (SZWI), MOCK zero weight independent (MZWI), light weight collaborative (LWC) and heavy weight independent (HWI) assessments. The framework has now been implemented during the last 2 academic sessions (2020/2021 and 2021/2022) and a comparision of the statistical indicators of student attainment in the unit over 5 different cohorts (2017/2018, 2018/2019, 2019/2020, 2020/2021 and 2021/2022) show very consistent trends. Additionally, responses from the unit evaluation questions (UEQs) completed by the students mostly depict very good levels of satisfaction.
The rapid adoption of technology and digitization of work, which has affected every facet of life including pedagogy, has created an opportunity to develop novel ways to teach technical and management skills to students to make them industry ready. However, several studies have highlighted that students studying engineering related disciplines within higher educational institutions are often disconnected from the management units within their programme curriculum, irrespective of the level of complexity. Additionally, there are concerns that the recent shifts towards predominantly hybrid or online & blended learning (OBL) approach advocated by most institutions due to restrictions imposed by COVID-19 pandemic has further eroded the already exiguous interest levels. This study therefore attempts to understand how engineering students at a department within the University of Manchester perceive management units and the possible root causes of previously observed attitudes. The unit examined was Operations Management (MACE30461), which is mandatory for all final year undergraduates studying for graduate degrees in aerospace, civil and mechanical engineering. The fundamental rationales behind selecting this unit are its coverage of several disciplines and cohort size, with an average of approximately 350 registered engineering students per year over the last five years. To achieve the overarching aim of this study, data was innovatively obtained from five separate cohorts, through a popular continuous improvement technique — the Fishbone diagram (FBD). The benefits of this data collection approach is multi-faceted. Firstly, it reinforces learning and familiarity of the students with the applied tools, which is crucial to the achievement of the intended learning outcomes (ILOs). Secondly, it enhances direct extraction of root causes (RCs) of the identified limiters as well as their possible causal relationships. Out of approximately 1758 students that have been registered on this unit over five years, 962 returned their solutions to the exercise. As it would be very unrealistic to present all of the individual FBDs constructed by each student, a harmonised FBD was reconstructed based on all the identified RCs. The results of the study generally depict two overwhelming findings. Firstly, there is a general misconception of the meaning of engineering, as most students believe that engineering programmes should only encompass core technical elements such as thermodynamics, design, fluid mechanics, vibrations, etc. Secondly, majority of students find the contents of most management units offered to engineering students uninteresting, particularly because of a lack of well-established link between such contents and what they perceive as real engineering. The authors therefore argue for innovative teaching methods that embed tools that are coherent with core technical units through hybrid or OBL, which is both cost effective and practical given the prevailing pandemic environment.
Engineering students hardly allocate equal level of engagement to their management units, even when such units are very complex or whether the teacher is from within or outside engineering disciplines, which often reduces student engagement as well as the accomplishments of the entire cohort. Although it is well‐established that the structure, format, and content of units' assessments play vital roles in how much university students interact with their units, there are compelling evidence for and against the efficacy of different assessment methods deployable by educators that teach management units. Therefore, the focus of this study is to ascertain the reason(s) for the subpar interest in management units by engineering students. Data was gathered using Fishbone diagrams (FBDs) that depicted possible root causes of the research question. In addition to data generation, the use of FBDs also enabled deeper understanding of continuous improvement and increased the response rates. Responses showed that “perception of engineering” and “nature of contents” were the most prominent root cause groups. Further observations depicted that the perception of engineering among the students is that of an entirely technical discipline, thereby making science, engineering, technology, and mathematics units the most important. Furthermore, several respondents underrated the contents of management units, due to insufficient alignment with emerging engineering concepts as well as their inadequate academic challenge. To examine the influence of the implemented changes to assessment method on students' achievements, the performance indicators of five different cohorts were compared, and the outcomes of the comparison depicted a consistent pattern of students' attainment. Furthermore, a students' scores match of >95% was observed between cohorts, which so far indicates consistency.
Asset management activities such as periodic overhauls are crucial for ensuring asset integrity and workplace safety. However, lessons learned from previous major industrial accidents across various high-risks industries have indicated that the perception of occupational safety and health (OSH) risks of maintenance personnel during major overhauls, outages, shutdowns and turnarounds (MoOSTs) are common denominators and precursors to several accidents. This is typically owing to several factors especially the fusion of all classes of routine maintenance tasks on enormous scales and the integration of a very diverse workforce (client, regulators, original equipment manufacturers, and various contracting firms) that possess very different safety cultures, which in turn compound overall risk profiles of job sites and the likelihood of accidents. Therefore, developing a good understanding of the risks perceptions and attitudes of MoOSTs workers towards can help improve overall OSH performance. Although several studies have investigated the subject of safety culture and climate in the context of projects especially engineering, procurement and construction (EPCs), however, studies and use cases on MoOSTs are significantly underrepresented, despite their impacts on costs, employment and wellbeing. This study therefore aims to advocate a safety culture that would boost OSH performance during MoOSTs through the development and deployment of safety climate questionnaire survey to MoOSTs workers of leading cement manufacturing operations in Nigeria. The study revealed “training and learning from incidents”, “commitment of senior management towards ensuring safety and its protocol deployment process”, and “effectiveness of incident reporting systems during MoOSTs” as the three main underlying safety climate factors.
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