THE EXPERIENCE AND THE PROJECTS OF THE DRESDEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY WITH REGARD TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENT EXCHANGE

The Dresden University of Technology takes part in various international student exchange programmes as part of the overall policy of the German Democratic Republic in favour of international understanding and co‐operation. Various kinds of student exchange and travel programmes are offered, and the ambition of the university is to generalize them so that all graduates will have completed some of their academic work abroad. The author cites the example of his institution's programme of promotion classes for talented students as being particularly valuable for the involvement of research‐oriented honours students in exchange projects. Yet he also argues that average students too should be involved in student exchanges.     

Design and implementation of multi-campus,modular master classes in biochemical engineering

The Master of Science in engineering technology: biochemical engineering is organised in KU Leuven at four geographically dispersed campuses. To sustain the Master's programmes at all campuses, it is clear that a unique education profile at each campus is crucial. In addition, a rationalisation is required by increased cooperation, increased exchange of lecturers, and increased student mobility. To achieve this, a multicampus education system for the M.Sc. in engineering technology: biochemical engineering was developed by offering modules that are also available for students of other campuses. Such a module is primarily based on the research expertise present at the campus. In the development, special attention has been given to the optimal organisation of the modules, evaluation, required modifications of the current curricula, and the practical consequences for students following the module at another campus. Even in the first year of implementation, around 30% of the students followed a multicampus module, which indicates the potential success of the multicampus concept described here.     

Courses for teaching leadership capacity in professional engineering degrees in Australia and Europe

Recently, many educational institutions across the globe have implemented engineering leadership programmes either as a part of a formal engineering curriculum or where leadership development is embedded into separate in-house programmes. This shows the clear intent of these educational institutions to prepare their engineering students for solving real-world problems, recognising that both technical and leadership skills are valuable for tomorrow's engineers. Leadership programmes in engineering education have been implemented in various formats with varying degrees of success. It has already been identified in research studies that 80–90% of engineering leadership programmes offered explicitly across the globe were based in the United States of America. However, in Europe and Australia, there is a noticeable lack of engineering leadership programmes, particularly in undergraduate curricula. The programmes that are offered across Australia and Europe have distinct design and delivery styles but there are certain key features that are common to most of the programmes, including professional partnerships, mentoring, engineering design and project-based approaches.     

Pathway from vocational education and associate degree to higher education: Chinese international students in Australia

Understanding factors influencing international students' decision to engage in international education is essential for education providers to better cater for students' educational expectations and enhance their attractiveness to international students. Whilst there has been extensive research on the reasons why international students undertake cross-border higher education, international students' motivations for enrolling in vocational education and associate degree programmes are still under-researched. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 30 international students from China, this research found that pathway to higher education appears to be the most important factor motivating international students to undertake vocational education and associate degree programmes. In addition, prospect of immigration, English language proficiency, previous academic performance, agent's recommendations and relatives' and friends' advice are amongst the important factors that students take into account in their decision to choose vocational education and associate degree programmes. This research also examines why Chinese international students have chosen vocational education programmes in a dual-sector university over vocational education colleges. It found that the flexibility to articulate to higher education, international reputation of the programme, practical training and favourable location are key issues that these students draw on when making their decision to study in a dual-sector university.     

Development of an engineering identity in the engineering curriculum in Dutch higher education: an exploratory study from the teaching staff perspective

How do engineering students develop a professional identity during the course of the curriculum? What are the development mechanisms and important conditions? In an exploratory study among teachers the authors tried to find out whether the development of engineering identity can be understood by using the theoretical models of Ibarra and Sullivan. The results showed that the development of engineering identity is boosted during the internship in industry in the third year. Furthermore, the theoretical models could be recognised in the findings and four interaction types in internships, with significant differences in effect on identity development, could be identified if two dimensions were used: (1) industry supervisors’ perception of students; (2) the professional responsibility awarded. Some recommendations for curriculum improvement could be made; for example, introducing projects into the curriculum to stimulate identity development from the start. Further research is required on students’ preparation for internships.     

Empathy among students in engineering programmes

Engineers face challenges when they are to manage project groups and be leaders for organisations because such positions demand skills in social competence and empathy. Previous studies have shown that engineers have low degrees of social competence skills. In this study, the level of empathy as measured by the four subscales of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, perspective taking, fantasy, empathic distress and empathic concern, among engineering students was compared to students in health care profession programmes. Participants were undergraduate students at Linköping University, 365 students from four different health care profession programmes and 115 students from two different engineering programmes. When the empathy measures were corrected for effects of sex, engineering students from one of the programmes had lower empathy than psychology and social worker students on the fantasy and perspective-taking subscales. These results raise questions regarding opportunities for engineering students to develop their empathic abilities. It is important that engineering students acquire both theoretical and practical knowledge and skills regarding empathy.     

Common elements of capstone projects in the world's top-ranked engineering universities

‘Capstone’ is a metaphor used to describe a final achievement that builds upon previous works and encapsulates them. Capstone projects are included in engineering curricula to integrate multi-disciplinary subjects and teach professional skills that are difficult to impart in a traditional lectured course. Since these projects serve to transition students into professional engineers, they have a direct impact on a university's industry reputation and ranking. Therefore, it is worthwhile to study the capstone programmes implemented at the world's top-ranked engineering universities to discover common elements which characterise them. In this paper, common elements of the capstone programmes implemented in mechanical and aerospace engineering undergraduate programmes in the world's top-ranked engineering universities are identified and analysed to determine established best practices. These practices can be modelled and applied to the pedagogy of engineering programmes at universities around the world to improve the development of professional skills of future graduates.     

Perceived causes of success and failure: Are women's attributions related to persistence in engineering majors?

This study explored the influence of attributional style on women's persistence in engineering majors, after controlling for academic ability. Female students (N = 255) previously or currently enrolled in the engineering college of a large midwestern university completed measures assessing their (a) attributions for science, mathematics, and engineering academic events; and (b) thoughts of changing career goals. Results revealed that, after controlling for academic ability, two attributional style dimensions were related to persistence in engineering majors. Among persisters in engineering, those attributional style dimensions were also related to thoughts of changing career goals. Implications for research are discussed, and recommendations for educators and advisors are presented. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 663–676, 1999     

Chinese Postgraduate Choices When Considering a UK Business and Management Programme

This research investigated Chinese students' decision making processes for enrolling on a postgraduate taught business and management programme in a UK university, based on structured interviews, followed by a survey of just over 450 respondents. The validity and reliability of the research instrument were assessed prior to issuing the survey. Convenience sampling was used to collect questionnaires from Chinese students in seven universities in the Northwest of the UK, and the findings were analysed using frequency and factor analysis. The research shows that Chinese students chose a country first, a programme (Business & Management) second, a university third, and a city last; the four choices are determined by 14 factors comprising 42 variables. This study has managerial implications for UK universities' policy makers, managers and practitioners to promote their programmes in China.     

The Contribution of International Academic Co-operation and Exchange to the Development and Advancement of Society

The author discusses the role of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the ongoing effort to internationalize German higher education. This organization endeavours to bring a substantial number of international students and academics to Germany and to enable German students and academics to study, do research, and teach abroad. Germany is a strong partner in the ongoing Bologna Process. German universities have introduced Bachelor's and Master's degree-level course programmes and are restructuring their doctoral programmes. They are forming networks with foreign universities all over the world. DAAD spends more than €60 million a year in support of structural changes in German universities leading to increased internationalization.     

Collaboration Between an Environmental Engineering Institute and a Municipality

Environmental policy-making with the goal of implementing sustainable development is finding its way to local municipalities. Several towns and cities in Europe have already produced detailed environmental programmes for their decision-makers to carry out. However, the demands can sometimes overpower personnel and their capacity to deal with rapid changes, if they are not provided with ‘target training’ or given temporary help by those familiar with these new environmental concepts. This paper discusses some of the various experiences gained in a collaboration between the City of Tampere and the environmental engineering education offered by the Tampere Institute of Technology during recent years. Joint practical and research projects at home and abroad, environmental surveys, short courses and theme days, and practical placements for both Finnish and foreign exchange students are described in this paper. It is the writer's hope that this report will encourage other educators to make similar approaches in their teaching work; to share responsibility in the community between those who know and those who want to know the way of solving some of our local and regional problems.     

The Role of Gender in Foreign Language Learning Attitudes: Japanese female students' attitudes towards English learning

Originating from a large-scale questionnaire-based study on Japanese high school students' attitudes towards current and long-term English learning, this study attempts to account for one of the findings, female students' superiority in attitudes to English learning over male students. This study problematises the common practice found in questionnaire-based research ending with the statistical identification of gender differences in attitudes without exploring factors influencing those differences. By utilising multidisciplinary extant data and research findings, this study argues that Japanese social elements, such as the status of English as feminised academic and professional choices and women's marginalised status in Japanese mainstream society, underlie many women's positive attitudes towards English learning. This study provides pedagogical implications for those in charge of English-related programmes either in Japan or in English-speaking countries who deal with a significant number of young Japanese female students in the programmes.     

On the design of learning outcomes for the undergraduate engineer's final year project

The course for the final year project for engineering students, because of its strongly research-based, open-ended format, tends to not have well defined learning outcomes, which are also not aligned with any accepted pedagogical philosophy or learning technology. To address this problem, the revised Bloom's taxonomy table of Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) is utilised, as suggested previously by Lee and Lai (2007), to design new learning outcomes for the final year project course in engineering education. Based on the expectations of the engineering graduate, and integrating these graduate expectations into the six cognitive processes and four knowledge dimensions of the taxonomy table, 24 learning outcomes have been designed. It is proposed that these 24 learning outcomes be utilised as a suitable working template to inspire more critical evaluation of what is expected to be learnt by engineering students undertaking final year research or capstone projects.     

Chinese Students in a UK Business School: Hearing the Student Voice in Reflective Teaching and Learning Practice

This paper presents the outcomes of a study carried out in 2001–2002 with nine postgraduate students from China, enrolled on taught master's programmes in a UK university business school. The aims of the research were to explore the development of the students’ orientations to learning during their year of study in the UK, and to explore how the researcher's interactions with the study group contributed to her professional reflections and influenced her academic practice. The main conclusions of the project were that participants’ underlying approaches to learning did not change substantially over the year, owing to the culturally implicit nature of UK academic conventions and that they experienced high levels of emotional isolation and loneliness, which affected their academic confidence.     

Exploring the impact of written reflections on learning in the elementary mathematics classroom

The authors examined the implementation of written reflections in a Grade 4 mathematics classroom over the course of 8 weeks. Students in this case study engaged in a workshop modeled after Calkin's Writers' Workshop and within this workshop the use of writing as a reflective tool in mathematics was introduced. The authors explore how students used writing to evaluate their learning and how the teacher used the students' written reflections as a formative assessment for instructional purposes. Students' written reflections were coded and these codes were used to conduct an inductive thematic analysis. Analysis of written reflections via constant-comparison analysis was used for further differentiation. The findings show students' ability to accurately self-evaluate their problem-solving skills and highlighted students' confidence level with certain mathematical concepts. Teachers were able to use students' reflections as a place to begin conferring with a student for further clarification. The written reflections aided in instructional decisions and increased individual instruction when needed. The authors include implications for teacher practice and areas for future research.     

工科专业本科生学习性投入的性别差异分析

本研究使用华中地区一所理工科院校的调查数据,分析工科专业本科生在学习性投入和学业收获中存在的性别差异,检验工科专业本科生学习性投入对其学业收获的影响是否因性别而存在不同。研究发现：工科专业女生在学习努力程度、课外拓展学习、学习意义感、学习动力及感知到的学术环境和人际关系等因素上均显著高于男生,但在生师交流互动、专业兴趣上显著低于男生;工科专业女生在校期间学习性投入程度更高,学习成绩更好,但对自我学习收获的评价相对较低;学习性投入各因素对工科专业男女生学业收获的正向促进作用也有所不同。对此,本文提出工程教育改革应重视工科专业女生的专业自信心和归属感的建立,以消除单一的男性主导的工科学习环境对女生学习及发展的潜在影响。     

Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: the use of personal experience in theoretical and analytical approaches

Abstract

This article is drawn from my research work, where I have interviewed students on a combined women's studies course through the 3 years of their degrees. I worked with 14 students in total, mainly non‐traditional entrants. The women combined their women's studies programmes with a range of other subjects (including literature, law, sociology, health studies, psychology and more), so giving me good comparisons between a range of academic subjects. My research has indicated that although it is not always recognised as academic study, the women have found the use of personal experience both challenging and exciting in developing the tools needed for theoretical and critical analytical approaches. I will conclude by suggesting that to take account of gender issues, as well as considering other marginalised groups, subject areas need to develop approaches to learning and teaching which encourage the use of personal experience in enabling students to engage in theoretical and analytical approaches in their study.     

Learning to become graduate students: Japanese women's experience in the research unit in engineering

Based on the analysis of 16 interviews with women first-year master's students at two national engineering schools in Japan, this article examines the socialisation role of compulsory undergraduate research experience in Japanese women's decisions to pursue graduate education and choices of the programme. The findings suggest that research experiences in a small independent research unit within the major department convinced Japanese women engineering students of their academic and social success as graduate students in the current environment. Although participants generally adapted themselves to the research unit through their research, there is a variation in the degree to which they were smoothly integrated into the research unit, reflecting organisational and individual differences.