Pre-exit survey of final year students to assess the mechanical engineering curriculum

Emmanuel Glakpe, Esther Akinlabi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEmerging Technologies for Education - 2nd International Symposium, SETE 2017, Held in Conjunction with ICWL 2017, Revised Selected Papers
EditorsTien-Chi Huang, Rynson Lau, Yueh-Min Huang, Marc Spaniol, Chun-Hung Yuen
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages180-188
Number of pages9
ISBN (Print)9783319710839
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Event2nd International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Education, SETE 2017, held in Conjunction with the 16th International Conference on Web-based learning, ICWL 2017 - Cape Town, South Africa
Duration: 20 Sept 201722 Sept 2017

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume10676 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference2nd International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Education, SETE 2017, held in Conjunction with the 16th International Conference on Web-based learning, ICWL 2017
Country/TerritorySouth Africa
CityCape Town
Period20/09/1722/09/17

Keywords

  • Engineering education
  • Pre-exit survey
  • Technology utilization

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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