Engineering Practice Research Summit

Education and Practice

Since the late 1990s, education objectives have been framed in terms of student learning outcomes, often referred to as competencies. However, very few of the people who teach engineering have contemporary knowledge of practice, which raises the question of whether they can therefore assess student learning as preparation for practice.

The dearth of recent industry experience of academics raises the question: “how can one teach engineering effectively without knowing how engineers are expected to perform?”. Opportunities for addressing this issue include investigating the relationship between changes in engineering education and education practice, the impact of industry engagement in education, authenticity of assessments, and experiences of graduates.

Education for Collaboration

A related challenge is the extent to which individual grading or assessment practices reinforce the valuing of independent practice by students, at the same time devaluing their interest, motivation and capacity for interdependent practice that characterize most engineering workplaces.

The notion of interdependent, collaborative work captures both the critical importance of communication skills and the context in which they are needed… to enact collaborative performances.

Communication is critical for effective collaboration and unfortunately, communication skills are still widely described in terms of ‘transferring information’: a deceptive and misleading interpretation.

Descriptions of Practice

Much has been learned about engineering practice, but little of this knowledge has spread to educators.

There is now a respectable body of knowledge with a few hundred publications. Yet, how many engineering faculty have either the time or inclination to find even a few let alone read them?

Concise, accessible and easy-to read descriptions of engineering practice will help disseminate this knowledge more effectively.

There remains more to understand about engineering practice, and how to inform education based on this understanding.

Indigenous Engineering

Indigenous People have been practicing engineering for tens of thousands of years. Yet, for the most part, engineering problem solving is implicitly embedded in Western philosophy and values, which have dominated modern engineering practice. In countries with a history of colonisation, the philosophies, principles, and practices that have informed and sustained Indigenous people over millennia have been actively prevented by legislation, government policies and colonial opprobrium, resulting in low representation of Indigenous people within the engineering profession.

The global challenges of the future require engineers to be more reflexive and aware of the diverse Indigenous cultural values, perspectives, and philosophies that impact engineering practice and education. We can address some of these challenges by responding to the following questions:

1. How can we engage with Indigenous knowledge holders to learn about Indigenous ingenuity in problem solving that have evolved within the many diverse Indigenous nations?
2. What is needed to transform ‘Western’ engineering, which is human-centred and transactional, to include Indigenous epistemology, ontology, and axiology, which are Country-centred and embrace a relational accountability.

Changing Engineering Practice

Engineering educators, employers, engineers, professional bodies, and governments have opportunities and responsibilities to develop engineering practice to further contribute to sustainable well-functioning societies. As the world embarks on the vast and urgent clean energy transition, engineering practice is inevitably changing. Advances in artificial intelligence are also impacting on engineering practice and, perhaps, are already influencing future employment opportunities for engineers.

Sustainability of Engineering Employment and Careers

Many employers experience frustrations with engineers and their ability and perhaps willingness to embrace the commercial imperatives that drive successful firms.

Employers invest significant time and resources developing the capabilities of their engineers, yet see higher than desirable turnover.

These challenges have widespread impact on the quality of engineering for society.

Studies on the sustainability of engineering careers may inform responses to this challenge.

Studies of socialization among early-career engineers may help employers reduce turnover and accelerate early-career engineers’ capability development.

Diversity and inclusion in the engineering workforce are critical to engineering outcomes. Studies are identifying practice weaknesses that contribute to employee turnover and dissatisfaction. New emerging perspectives on neuro-diversity may also help us focus more on the different capability spectra that characterize engineers in workplaces.

Factors Influencing Practice

In the early 2000s, there was so little research on practice that it was sufficient merely to start cataloguing significant aspects of practice among engineers. However, the questions ‘Why do engineers do what they do?’ and ‘Why do engineers eschew certain activities?’ soon emerged.

As Davide Nicolini remarked “[non]theoretical cataloguing of what practitioners do may be an exciting endeavour for academics who are unfamiliar with the specific occupation, but it sheds little light on the meaning of the work that goes into it, what makes it possible, why it is the way it is, and how it contributes to, or interferes with, the production of organizational life”.

Engineering practice needs to distinguish and identify both ‘the work’ and ‘the worker’ and focus more critically on the historical and contemporary factors that shape practice in different contexts.

Opportunities to Enhance Engineering Practice

Engineering practice has substantial room for growth in collaboration among other opportunities for growth to improve outcomes in project performance. This often results in major and minor engineering projects failing to meet requirements, with significant economic consequences.

Engineers deliver artefacts, systems, and infrastructure that enable people to be productive, saving time, effort, and resources. However, Australian and global productivity growth has stalled since the early 2000s. Coupled with this is the limited understanding among engineers on how their work creates commercial and social value.