Positioning an integrated engineering education unit within a School of Engineering in the South African context

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has reemphasised the potential importance of having a unit or a formal structure that supports engineering students and faculty. Maintaining the integrity of teaching and learning during the pandemic necessitated collaboration, new skills, and new ways of thinking, for which many universities and faculties were unprepared. It is proposed that an Engineering Education Unit (EEU) would be able to facilitate new learning and thinking, an integrated view of collaboration and exploring new technologies. Therefore, this position paper provides a case for the establishment of an EEU and was aimed at answering the following research question: How can we position the integration of an Engineering Education Unit in South African universities which do not currently have such a formal structure? As a result, this paper aims to position how Engineering Education Research (EER) and engineering education practice can be integrated rather than separated. Furthermore, the scholarship of Engineering Education (EE) presents itself as an exciting space for collaborative thinking between engineering education scholars, engineering practitioners and engineering students. The researchers center their argument around three theoretically informed concepts in this position paper, namely (I) Community participation for skills development, (2) Crafting methodological relevance, (3) and Emerging economies such as the 4th Industrial Revolution (4thIR) / Industry 4. 0. Although several studies have examined clear distinctions between engineering education as practice-based and engineering education as research-focused, a strong focus on how an alignment of both fields could inform the agenda of an EEU has been lacking. As such, this position paper provides additional insights into the ways in which theory can inform the teaching and practice of engineering curriculum by establishing a Unit that is dedicated to the practical application of engineering education research. The Unit would be a place for engineering faculty to seek meaningful exploration in building community towards equitable, social participatory, engineering education learning experiences. The growing number of local and global institutions that have been engaging extensively with work in both the engineering education space and the education research space, support the justification for the establishment of such a Unit. It is envisaged that other universities can use the results of this position paper as motivation to establish their own EEU. Similarly, it can facilitate an understanding of the possible benefits of such a Unit. The anticipated benefits of such a Unit are: (i) furthering the engineering education research agenda, (ii) breaking down silos, (iii) interdisciplinary collaboration, and (iv) increasing student success.