Enhancing learning outcomes from industry engagement in Australian engineering education

Abstract

Industry engagement, commonly implemented as a 12 week industry placement during a vacation towards the end of the degree, has traditionally been a provider-mandated component of externally accredited professional engineering degrees in Australia. Such placements are intended to bridge knowledge and capability gaps between academic study and engineering employment and contextualise the final phase of academic study. Changes in the composition of Australia’s engineering industries have made it progressively harder to source such placements. In-curriculum exposure to engineering practice has also been expected, but has been delivered with considerable variability. In 2014 the authors completed a national project, led by the Australian Council of Engineering Deans (ACED), with peak industry bodies and several partner universities, funded from the Commonwealth Department of Industry Workplace Innovation Program, to explore how improving industry engagement could contribute further to engineering graduates’ learning outcomes and employability. The data collected from the engineering students and employers, reported in this paper, can now be regarded as baseline data on industry engagement, against which subsequent developments can be referenced. For the first time, students’ ratings of the value of different methods for industry engagement are shown to be related to their ‘authenticity’. Several industry-inspired in-curriculum interventions were also trialled at partner universities. Guidelines for good practice were developed from melding the experiential findings with theoretical perspectives. In the years since completing the project, the accreditation body, Engineers Australia, has updated and intensified its focus on engagement with practice (including changing its language from ‘exposure’ to ‘engagement’), and many engineering faculties have significantly enhanced their models and requirements for work integrated learning and industry engagement. This paper outlines these changes and examples of new implementations, including virtual and electronically-mediated methods that also reflect ongoing changes in engineering industry practice.

Perception on the Achievement of Course Learning Outcomes of an Undergraduate Final Semester Project Virtual Symposium

“…As a programme that allowed academics, students, and industry to come together, the information and knowledge exchange and learning experiences obtained during the virtual symposium had benefitted all parties involved. Since placement and internships are getting more complex due to various changes in the industry and global issues, in-curricular engagement through electronic and virtual communications might be the way forward for both academia and industry (Male & King, 2019).…”

“…Most importantly, students gain realworld knowledge and experience through engagement activities such as inviting guest speakers, virtual site tours, case studies and others (Burns & Chopra, 2017). Male and King (2019) found that students who engage in industry placements through workplace-based activities acquired a lot of effective and positive experiences, but acknowledged through students' responses that currently, it is not easy to get quality industry placements. Therefore, a combination of a well-constructed in-curriculum and extracurricular activities such as online interviews with experts, simulated workplace communication with experts, and authentic project-based tasks connected through virtual reality may allow for an alternate way to provide workplace and real-world experiences to the students (Male & King, 2019).…”

“…Male and King (2019) found that students who engage in industry placements through workplace-based activities acquired a lot of effective and positive experiences, but acknowledged through students' responses that currently, it is not easy to get quality industry placements. Therefore, a combination of a well-constructed in-curriculum and extracurricular activities such as online interviews with experts, simulated workplace communication with experts, and authentic project-based tasks connected through virtual reality may allow for an alternate way to provide workplace and real-world experiences to the students (Male & King, 2019). According to Goh, Leong, Kasmin, Hii and Tan (2017), carefully designed e-learning settings allow students to exchange and share knowledge with peers and instructors, increasing their satisfaction and achieving learning outcomes.…”

Pandemic exacerbating Work Integrated Learning experience for International Students in Australia

“…Many Australian universities and institutes of higher education have opted to make the engineering students responsible for acquiring 12 weeks of industry placement in order to address mandated requirements of WIL by EA (Male and King, 2019).…”

“…Despite being instrumental in equipping new engineering graduates with the much-needed employability skills and bridging the skill gap, WIL comes with its own set of challenges. Several factors including privatisation of previously state-owned engineering infrastructure, engineering-based manufacturing moving offshore, and rise in contract-based engineering services require arduous efforts in availing traditional work experience placement (Male and King, 2019). This not only delays graduation but also fails to satisfy an ever-increasing demand of employable engineering graduates and ends up accentuating the skill shortage.…”