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The Engineers of the Future Will Not Resemble the Engineers of the Past

Former Community Member over 5 years ago

https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/education/the-engineers-of-the-future-will-not-resemble-the-engineers-of-the-past

This is dated May 2017

I think it's relevant internationally even Engineering education and formation is different between countries.

I thought it would be good to share it in this forum.

Moshe W BEET, MCGI, CEng MBCS, MIET

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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

Thanks Moshe

I picked up these points, obviously coming from a UK perspective.

“Today, students are expected to be job-ready with a B.S. degree, so 75 percent of their education is technical courses. Freshman year is designed to be a filter; we send them off to take math and science and tell them to come back if they survive, so dropout rates are 50 percent or more,” Plummer explained.

I’m not sure what he means by “technical courses” in his first sentence, I think perhaps he is trying to make a point that the focus is too narrow. I wouldn’t see the Math & Science “Boot Camp” mentality that he describes in the second sentence as making someone “work-ready”, although it might help for some roles. High drop-out rates seem very costly both financially and psychologically for those who had their aspirations for an engineering career sacrificed or damaged at this a particular altar.

Stanford’s d.school approach of assigning student teams real-world problems, Plummer insists, is another important innovation. And dramatically changing the introductory electrical engineering course to organize it around maker projects instead of lectures.

The academic elements of the degree apprenticeship that I managed were 80% project based, using real examples of projects that the company had either carried out or been asked to tender for (with permission). The other 20% covered the more formal aspects of maths & science , which didn’t naturally emerge from real projects. Because the project teams consisted of trainees with different specialisms including commercial and were ultimately presented to a panel of company senior engineers and academics, a wide range of other attributes were developed. I interpret Prof Plummer’s remarks and these http://epc.ac.uk/creating-a-new-breed-of-supergrads/ as coming from a similar position.

Whilst I warmly welcome this “conversion”, those drawn from the more vocational tradition, focussed on “teaching” rather than “research” have found themselves regarded as “poor relations” by an academically snobbish and conservative establishment who seem according to Prof Plummer to be satisfied with “filtering out” good people (if they weren’t why were they admitted to the programme). In the UK this desire to “filter out” has the effect that most engineers “drop out” of professional registration opportunities, leaving mainly the fraction who survived the math & science “ordeal” and eventually looked back fondly on this “rite of passage”.

But masters-level programs, at least at brick-and-mortar schools, “will just go away,” he predicts. “Instead it will be about lifelong education and just-in-time knowledge, and that will be done online.”

A number of UK universities and employer/education partnerships have been doing this for at least a decade or two offering masters programmes often customised around work-based learning opportunities , with blended learning. This is almost an historical observation rather than future prediction. We all remember where we were on Sept 11 2001, in my case receiving a presentation form 2 of my company’s employees who had just completed a one-week MSc module at Loughborough University of just this kind. The programme had an active employer’s steering group which I attended, influencing the programme content and the programme leader had carried out some research for us. Unfortunately, like many efforts of this kind, the niche markets that they tend to serve, makes financial models “difficult”. Most UK full-time post-graduate programmes mainly consist of overseas students which makes them financially sustainable.
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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

Thanks Moshe

I picked up these points, obviously coming from a UK perspective.

“Today, students are expected to be job-ready with a B.S. degree, so 75 percent of their education is technical courses. Freshman year is designed to be a filter; we send them off to take math and science and tell them to come back if they survive, so dropout rates are 50 percent or more,” Plummer explained.

I’m not sure what he means by “technical courses” in his first sentence, I think perhaps he is trying to make a point that the focus is too narrow. I wouldn’t see the Math & Science “Boot Camp” mentality that he describes in the second sentence as making someone “work-ready”, although it might help for some roles. High drop-out rates seem very costly both financially and psychologically for those who had their aspirations for an engineering career sacrificed or damaged at this a particular altar.

Stanford’s d.school approach of assigning student teams real-world problems, Plummer insists, is another important innovation. And dramatically changing the introductory electrical engineering course to organize it around maker projects instead of lectures.

The academic elements of the degree apprenticeship that I managed were 80% project based, using real examples of projects that the company had either carried out or been asked to tender for (with permission). The other 20% covered the more formal aspects of maths & science , which didn’t naturally emerge from real projects. Because the project teams consisted of trainees with different specialisms including commercial and were ultimately presented to a panel of company senior engineers and academics, a wide range of other attributes were developed. I interpret Prof Plummer’s remarks and these http://epc.ac.uk/creating-a-new-breed-of-supergrads/ as coming from a similar position.

Whilst I warmly welcome this “conversion”, those drawn from the more vocational tradition, focussed on “teaching” rather than “research” have found themselves regarded as “poor relations” by an academically snobbish and conservative establishment who seem according to Prof Plummer to be satisfied with “filtering out” good people (if they weren’t why were they admitted to the programme). In the UK this desire to “filter out” has the effect that most engineers “drop out” of professional registration opportunities, leaving mainly the fraction who survived the math & science “ordeal” and eventually looked back fondly on this “rite of passage”.

But masters-level programs, at least at brick-and-mortar schools, “will just go away,” he predicts. “Instead it will be about lifelong education and just-in-time knowledge, and that will be done online.”

A number of UK universities and employer/education partnerships have been doing this for at least a decade or two offering masters programmes often customised around work-based learning opportunities , with blended learning. This is almost an historical observation rather than future prediction. We all remember where we were on Sept 11 2001, in my case receiving a presentation form 2 of my company’s employees who had just completed a one-week MSc module at Loughborough University of just this kind. The programme had an active employer’s steering group which I attended, influencing the programme content and the programme leader had carried out some research for us. Unfortunately, like many efforts of this kind, the niche markets that they tend to serve, makes financial models “difficult”. Most UK full-time post-graduate programmes mainly consist of overseas students which makes them financially sustainable.
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The Engineers of the Future Will Not Resemble the Engineers of the Past

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