TY - GEN
T1 - Pre-exit survey of final year students to assess the mechanical engineering curriculum
AU - Glakpe, Emmanuel
AU - Akinlabi, Esther
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - As part of the goals to provide excellent educational opportunities to students, most undergraduate programs in engineering on different continents seek some form of accreditation, be it a part of a national requirement or part of a global initiative. The mechanical engineering program at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) is one such program that prepares many students for engineering practice. As with all such programs, there is always the need to evaluate, assess and institute measures to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning methods to better prepare students for the global environment. As part of an initiative of the Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellowship Program, the mechanical engineering department hosted a Fellow from Howard University, Washington DC to interact with colleagues and students at the UJ to discuss and share best-practice ideas on enhancing teaching and learning. As a start, a survey was prepared and administered to first-semester final year students to assess the learning outcomes of the department and to gather additional information about other factors such as faculty, advising and mentoring, the curriculum, and technology utilization in the curriculum. Overall, the students ranked the learning outcomes and other measures very highly except for the lack of opportunities to enhance managerial and entrepreneurial skills (soft skills) and the to interact with potential employers while matriculating through program. The use of technological tools for engineering applications is highlighted as one of the areas that can be enhanced with minimal investments to improve the learning of engineering subjects.
AB - As part of the goals to provide excellent educational opportunities to students, most undergraduate programs in engineering on different continents seek some form of accreditation, be it a part of a national requirement or part of a global initiative. The mechanical engineering program at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) is one such program that prepares many students for engineering practice. As with all such programs, there is always the need to evaluate, assess and institute measures to enhance the effectiveness of teaching and learning methods to better prepare students for the global environment. As part of an initiative of the Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellowship Program, the mechanical engineering department hosted a Fellow from Howard University, Washington DC to interact with colleagues and students at the UJ to discuss and share best-practice ideas on enhancing teaching and learning. As a start, a survey was prepared and administered to first-semester final year students to assess the learning outcomes of the department and to gather additional information about other factors such as faculty, advising and mentoring, the curriculum, and technology utilization in the curriculum. Overall, the students ranked the learning outcomes and other measures very highly except for the lack of opportunities to enhance managerial and entrepreneurial skills (soft skills) and the to interact with potential employers while matriculating through program. The use of technological tools for engineering applications is highlighted as one of the areas that can be enhanced with minimal investments to improve the learning of engineering subjects.
KW - Engineering education
KW - Pre-exit survey
KW - Technology utilization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041446896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-319-71084-6_20
DO - 10.1007/978-3-319-71084-6_20
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85041446896
SN - 9783319710839
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 180
EP - 188
BT - Emerging Technologies for Education - 2nd International Symposium, SETE 2017, Held in Conjunction with ICWL 2017, Revised Selected Papers
A2 - Huang, Tien-Chi
A2 - Lau, Rynson
A2 - Huang, Yueh-Min
A2 - Spaniol, Marc
A2 - Yuen, Chun-Hung
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 2nd International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Education, SETE 2017, held in Conjunction with the 16th International Conference on Web-based learning, ICWL 2017
Y2 - 20 September 2017 through 22 September 2017
ER -