Engineering Pedagogy | Engineering Education Research

Harnessing the Sun's vast energy can help in the sustainable development of nations, particularly those with transitional economies. There are plenty of educational programmes that build capacity in this exciting area. But do these programmes meet the needs of industry? Do they meet the expectations of the students? Furthermore, why would students enrol in these programmes. We therefore decided to conduct an extensive survey that aimed to understand why students would like to study solar energy. These surveys were completed by 718 students. Moreover, we asked 57 solar energy companies what essential graduate attributes were needed from these programmes. Details regarding our investigations can be found in our recently published paper . 

Implantable and wearable technologies are medical devices that have been used to monitor, track and record vital human signs. Thanks to advancements in packaging and nanofabrication, it is now possible to embed various microelectronic devices into a small area and at a relatively low cost. Despite all the recent progress, there are few  engineering programmes that train students in the field of implantable and wearable electronics. To address this gap, we have  initiated  a dedicated training programme that makes use of active learning techniques, which aims to train students in this important area. Our research findings are demonstrated in a recent article that has been accepted for publication in IEEE Access . Moreover, we have compared student experiences between two prestigious institutions  in Europe ( KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden ) and China ( UESTC in Chengdu ).

Engineers in the real world rarely work in isolation. Often, they work in teams to solve ill-bounded problems that do not have an ideal solution. This is different from the style of questions that our engineering students are trained to solve. I've been trying to find ways to promote the teaching of teamwork to engineering students. I've done this via a new course called: Team Design and Project Skills ( doi:10.5281/zenodo.3653965 ) . However, there were challenges in assessing individual contributions to the team project. Can ELNs be used for facilitating and assessing teamwork? Can ELNs encourage students to keep well maintained notebooks that contain both text and images, just as Leonardo da Vinci achieved many centuries ago? Can This is what I have aimed to investigate in my recently funded project by Glasgow University's Learning and Teaching Development Fund (LTDF).