Navigating a Constitutional Moment: Reflections on Implementing Graduate Attributes in Canadian Engineering Education

Section: The Celbest Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

CELBEST Project: Design and Implementation of the First Engineering Education-specific Assessment Tool for Professional Communicative Competence

Fabretto

2017

“…The need to foster this new type of practitioner has given rise to new types of pedagogical structures [5]. One such pedagogical structure references the renewed interest in experiential education [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing Experiential Education on Engineering and Society

Harsh¹,

Caron²,

Dysart-Gale³

et al. 2015

Self Cite

Recent educational research in engineeringhas examined the challenges Canadian universities are facing when implementing graduate attributes, especially those attributes that involve significant social components (such as ethics and equity, impact of technology on society, and communication skills). In response to these challenges, this paper asks: how might experiential education be used as an approach to teach non-technical graduate attributes? Having asked this question at our own institution, we are in the process of implementing experienced-based approaches to engineering education. We describe our efforts in curricular and non-curricular spaces which include adding project-based components to our existing courses on technology and society and communication, designing a new experiential course on creativity and innovation, serving as clients for capstone courses, facilitating reflection for our co-op program, developing a workshop on community engagement, and organizing design competitions in our innovation centre. We analyze the challenges and the benefits of these approaches. Our argument is that experience alone may not lead to planned learning outcomes, so finding creative ways to promote reflection on experience becomes critical. In our programs, this has meant: playing the role of both client and facilitator in projects; partnering with faculty members in other disciplines; and having students directly interact with users from very different backgrounds. Through these approaches, we are finding ways to help students visualize the lived context of technology use in communities, and ways to help them understand the non-technical components of design and co-op work that are essential if we want to create just and sustainable outcomes though technology. The implication of this preliminary reflexive account is that experiential education holds much promise for improving instruction related to non-technical graduate attributes.

“…The process in [2] elaborates on how to (i) identify learning objectives, (ii) create measurable criteria for different graduate attributes, (iii) map the criteria to program outcomes, (iv) identify appropriate measures and standards, (v) measure the criteria, (vi) analyze and evaluate the data, and (vii) improve the program based on results. Recent research at Concordia University [4] identifies two important problems that (a) arise in the processes of translation from the CEAB GA to measurable indicators of student performance; and (b) that many traditional engineering professors are ill-equipped to answer. The first problem alludes to the measurement of attributes that create social awareness in our students.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, "how exactly does one measure how well a student has internalized the 'ethics and equity' attribute or the 'life-long learning' attribute?" [4]. The second observed problem is that "many instructors would use existing course syllabi as sources of definitions of indicators, assessment criteria, and rubrics for success for the new CEAB graduate attributes and professors believed that their courses were already meeting the outcomes criteria.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second observed problem is that "many instructors would use existing course syllabi as sources of definitions of indicators, assessment criteria, and rubrics for success for the new CEAB graduate attributes and professors believed that their courses were already meeting the outcomes criteria. Thus, existing pedagogy was repackaged and presented as a way of assessing new graduate attributes" [4]. However, the paper negates that the current engineering education culture enables either the instructor or the students to always be mindful of the GAs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Engineers as Life-Long Learners: Pedagogical Tools for Engineering Graduate Attribute Development

Nizami

Abdelazez

Chan

2015

We integrate three pedagogical constructs to design a novel toolbox to support engineering graduate attribute development and measurement of life-long learning. These constructs are (i) Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the Cognitive Domain, (ii) Curriculum mapping to skill levels of Introduction, Reinforcement, Mastery and Assessment (IRMA), and (iii) High Impact Practices (HIPs). We use the toolbox in a single, but in-depth, experiential education research study in our department’s Biomedical and Electrical Engineering program. We formally introduce these pedagogies to a cohort of eighteen final year students. The students then use the toolbox throughout the term to identify and address their own educational needs such that they develop into independent, competent life-long learners. We test the effectiveness of the toolbox using mixed methods research. Bloom’s Taxonomy levels scored by the instructor and the students had a correlation coefficient of 0.36. IRMA mapping was tested using binomial hypothesis testing. The test accepted the alternative hypothesis H1: Student mapping of course learning outcomes to a skill level was informed by the instructor’s pedagogy and followed the same distribution as the instructor's mapping, i.e., the mapping was not random and p≠0.5. Results showed H1: {I (47%), R (84%), M (63%)}. In addition, experiential impressions of life-long learning on the students were gathered through qualitatively written feedback.