Effects of Service Projects on the Perceived Skills of Engineering Technology Students

Abstract

Client based service projects offer many advantages to instructors, students and host communities. However, instructors must carefully choose the projects in order to achieve the benefits that come with this pedagogical tool. The purpose of this research was to investigate the perception of engineering technology students on how different service projects influence performance and perceived skills. A modified perceived skill model was used to measure the perceived effect of the team based service projects on: motivation to learn, contribution to research knowledge, skills and personal benefit, and project as a learning device. The projects were either client based or non-client based. In addition, they were categorized as either engineering, non-engineering, or some engineering projects. The non-engineering were the projects with no engineering content, whereas those with some form of engineering content were classified as some engineering. From the results, it appears that all the project types and categories were highly perceived by the students as contributing to their perceived skills. They were also highly perceived as great learning tools. Additionally, the projects with engineering content (client based and non-client based) provided a significantly higher perceived motivation to learn. However, there was no significant difference in the exam performance.

Public Perception of Engineering Technology: A Literature Review

“…There is also some existing research on engineering technology graduates from specific countries, such as Malaysia [6]; however, most of these focus on employability [7] and the general availability of resources to these graduates within their industry (such as the state of their labs) rather than being directly about perception. In general, perception is discussed as a factor that affects the topic being researched, rather than being the subject of any studies itself, which often leads to most material centering on the perspectives of employers rather than the general public; this emphasis continues even outside those countries [8] [9].…”

Augmented Botswanan Learning Experience

“…This declaration helped spur a shift in engineering education as many academic programs began organizing content around the Grand Challenges and pivoting from a competitive, lecture-based course of study to a more hands-on, collaborative problem-solving approach (Mote, Dowling, & Zhou, 2016). With a new focus on more problem-based approaches to teaching engineering concepts practitioners seized upon growing opportunities to engage students in experiential learning experiences where they could learn by doing (Appiah-Kubi & Brion, 2019). For the global community there were implications as well.…”