Employer Involvement In Undergraduate Projects: Staff And Student Perspectives

Abel Nyamapfene & Dawn Evans

12 April 2012

Project Overview

This project is part of a National HE STEM funded consortium project

by six South West of England universities to:

1.Explore innovative approaches to involving employers in the STEM undergraduate curriculum.

2.Investigate the transferability of approaches to employer-led experiential learning between different STEM disciplines and the adoption of multidisciplinary approaches by STEM departments

3.Promote opportunities for employers to get involved in the STEM undergraduate curriculum.

Specific Project Objectives

To compare and contrast the different types of employer-

involvement in undergraduate engineering projects from the

perspective of students and academics

To build a suitable analysis technique for evaluating projects with

employer-involvement

To identify potential barriers to employer-involvement in

undergraduate projects and to suggest recommendations on how to

avoid and overcome these barriers

Importance of Employer Involvement in Undergraduate Projects – Literature sources

Engineering academics generally agree that projects with employer-

involvement:

Offer great opportunities for students to be involved in rich,

challenging and meaningful educational project experiences

Enable students to work on finding engineering solutions to real

problems faced by industry.

Are highly motivational for the students, and eases the transition

from university to the workplace.

Typical Problems faced by Projects with Employer Involvement – Literature sources

Poor communication between the employer, academic and

student

Mismatch between the expectations of the three parties,

leading to deterioration in relationships and subsequent poor

project outcomes.

Legal problems arising out of issues such as intellectual

property rights.

Project Methodology

A mixed methods approach incorporating:

Documentary analysis of 2010/11 third year

individual projects

Student questionnaires

In-depth follow-up student interviews

Academic staff interviews

In-house Rating of Employer Involvement in Student Projects

Level of Industrial Involvement Rating

Company provides support fund and sets project 5

Company sets the project or sponsors students 4

Project set internally but company interested in the results. Named company contact

3

Possible industrial interest identified 2

No industrial link 1

Analysis of the 2010-11 Individual Engineering Student Projects

Industrial Involvement Rating

Project Distribution

Seniority Ranking of Academic Supervisors

Full Professor Associate Professor

Senior Lecturer

Lecturer

5 1 0 1 0 0

4 9 1 6 2 0

3 15 0 6 6 3

2 33 3 6 17 7

1 38 0 8 11 19

Observation: The distribution of academic seniority in the project rankings suggests that an academic’s level of research activity may contribute to more opportunities for

securing projects with higher industrial involvement.

INDEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH ACADEMICSIndepth interviews carried out with a lecturer, senior

lecturer

and associate professor:

Observations:

1.All three academics support industry-linked projects

2.Senior lecturer and associate professor regard industry-linked undergraduate projects primarily as a means of developing research links.

3.This suggests that for academics pedagogic benefits of industry-linked projects secondary to research benefits

Student Questionnaires

Student questionnaires handed out to final year MEng students

during a lecture session in October 2011.

Cohort is the one that carried out the third year individual

engineering student project in the previous academic year 2010-11.

70 questionnaires that were distributed:

- 35 were completed and returned

` - 10 of these were from students who had done industry-

linked projects

Responses of the 10 Students with Industry-linked projects (1):

Relationship with the industrial organisation:Good to excellent 6Neutral 3Poor 1

Relationship with the industrial organisation contact person :Good to excellent 6Neutral 4Poor 0

Responses of the 10 Students with Industry-linked projects (2):

Easy to initiating and maintaining contacts with industrial organisation:Agree: 9 Disagree: 1

NB: Student who disagreed was the same throughout

There were prior contacts between the engineering department and the industrial organisation:

Agree: 9 Disagree: 1

Willing to take up employment with the organisation on graduating Agree: 9 Disagree: 1

Student perspectives on skills acquisition

Interpersonal skills improved: Agreed All 10

Technical skills improved: Agreed - 8

hands-on activities adequate: Agreed - 5

project was well structured: Agreed - 8

Feedback was adequate: Agreed - 4 NB: Findings suggest that the level of interaction between the students and industrial organisation was adequate and meaningful.

INDEPTH INTERVIEW WITH DISGRUNTLED STUDENT

The student’s project involved developing a project idea that an

external non-corporate individual had brought.

Student did not see it as a project from industry, and he thought

the project was “rubbish”.

The student also felt that the project had contributed little to

employability

The student felt that the project had not motivated him, and that

was why he had not completed it

Closing remarks

Academics view industry-linked projects primarily

from a research perspective

Students generally happy with depth and conduct of

industry-linked projects

There is a need to manage student expectations if

disappointments are to be avoided later on.