The Australasian Association for Engineering Education

August 2008 (Issue 2008/2)

From the President

Roger Hadgraft

The Review of Engineering Education: Robin King's review was published earlier this year, with a series of recommendations for us all. Some of these recommendations are being picked up by some successful ALTC (formerly Carrick) projects. There are, however, many areas for improvement. The Associate Deans (T&L/L&T) are getting organized through David Jorgensen at CQU to address these issues and others.  Journal of Engineering Education (JEE): The Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) is the number one research journal in engineering education. We have reached agreement with the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) to make the JEE a member benefit for AAEE members. The cost is $30 per annum for four issues per year delivered via airmail to your door. This will also give you access to the online site where you can download any of the past papers electronically: http://www.asee.org/publications/jee/index.cfm. This compares to a normal cost of $120+ to be a member of ASEE as the normal way of receiving JEE. To subscribe, please contact Narelle Folkard at EA as: enquiries@aaee.com.au. We are hoping to have the September issue delivered as the first for Australasian subscribers.

Northern Hemisphere Conferences: In June-July I had the chance to take a northern tour through four engineering education conferences in three weeks: ASEE in Pittsburgh, the PBL08 conference and the SEFI 2008 conference in Aalborg in Denmark and finally REES08 in Davos, Switzerland (loved the scenery). REES is the Research in Engineering Education Symposium. Having sampled all these conferences, I can report that the standard of the annual AAEE conferences is on a par with ASEE and SEFI. For those who have the chance, ASEE is a great chance to see a wide range of EE activity, with 3,000 registrants, 1,400 papers and up to 40 parallel sessions. The exhibition is a great place to see the latest books, software and lab equipment. The next one is in Texas. The next REES conference will be in our backyard since I've volunteered to chair it. Likely destinations are Singapore or Darwin. I'll soon be looking for volunteers for the organizing committee.

• The future is interdisciplinarity - at first year and final year. So, we need common final years as well as common first years.
• We will increasingly use e-portfolios to help students track their attainment of graduate attributes. This will lead to a truly student centred curriculum.
• Cyberinfrastructure is the next buzzword.
• We need to make better use of shared resources. See, for example, http://www.engineeringpathway.com/ep/hEd/coursePrep/

Project Handbook: When I was at RMIT, we developed a small handbook to help students get started with project work. We've now uploaded it to a wiki: http://project-handbook.pbwiki.com. Thanks go to the School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at RMIT and there are also contributions from old colleagues in Civil Engineering at Monash. Recent changes come from Engineering at the University of Melbourne. We would like this to become a community resource, so please refer your students to it and also suggest changes and additions. I am happy to send chapters to anyone who wants to make changes for upload.

The 2008 Conference: Make sure that you set aside time to get to this year's conference in fabulous Yeppoon for the annual recharge of enthusiasm and the latest news in engineering education. More news below.

Roger Hadgraft,
President
( roger.hadgraft@unimelb.edu.au)

Please visit our website for more details

Joining AAEE and the benefits
While this section was in the last newsletter, it makes sense to leave it in to reitterate the member benefits. AAEE has a growing community of people who are deeply passionate about the quality of engineering students' learning experiences. For a full set of instructions on how to become a member of AAEE and join this expanding network, go to http://www.aaee.com.au/join / and download an application form.

In brief, students and members of Engineers Australia and students can join for free . With a deal like that who needs to throw in a set of free steak knives?  Others are asked to part with a very small fee that goes towards some of the administration costs.

The 2008 Executive Committee
Since our last newsletter the AAEE executive committee met twice.  The minutes are available upon request from the committee EA secretariat, Narelle Folkard (nfolkard@engineersaustralia.org.au) who has stepped in to replace Christine King.

The 2008 Conference Hopefully you are all fully aware that this years conference will be held at the Rydges Capricorn Resort from December 7th  to 10th , h osted by Central Queensland University. The conference theme will be 'To Industry and Beyond' and the organising is now well and truly under way. With the closing date for papers now behind us and over 100 papers submitted, we are entering into the refereeing process.  Authors should soon hear about their papers and workshops by 12th September.

Prue Howard

Prof Jorg Steinbach (President SEFI and 1^st Vice President TU Berlin), one of our keynote speakers, will be addressing engineering education beyond Australasia and talking about the outcomes of the Bologna Process and the accreditation issues that arise from this process. Our other keynote speaker, Dr Clive Graham, is concurrently CEO of The Centre for Working Futures Pty and the futures1brand products. He has worked in advertising, education, marketing, and broadcasting consulting for multinational corporations and government enterprises. His academic and research interests lie in transdisciplinary knowledge production, entrepreneurial thinking, and the economic impact of the creative industries. Dr Graham has written a number of books. His most recent, Enterprise Education: Connecting Schools with the Creative Knowledge Economy was published by Pearson Education in 2005. He is well known to ABC audiences for his many years as a radio commentator on the future of work. He will be addressing "beyond Industry"

Registration for the conference will soon be open so please check the website www.events.rockhamptoninfo.com.au/aaee2008  regularly for updates.

2009 Conference The committee has just anounced that the 2009 AAEE Conference will be held and hosted by The University of Adelaide( http://www.adelaide.edu.au). Those wishing to plan their trip early might want to browse the South Australian tourism website at http://www.southaustralia.com/. Subsequent issues of this newsletter and the website will anounce the details as they unfold.

Future Conferences and Congresses

CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement, Operate)

Duncan Campbell

CDIO activities continue to percolate away. There has been at least one Carrick Institute proposal submitted by Carl Reidsema (University of New South Wales), Roger Hadgraft (University of Melbourne), Dave Levy (University of Sydney) and myself (Queensland University of Technology) in the latest Priority Projects Program round. We have recently been informed that this bid was successful. We look forward to steaming ahead on that project. Development continues around the CDIO Special Interest Group area on the AAEE Edna website. We are trying to get the structure of the AAEE Group configured so that it is easy to navigate around this and the other SIGs. There promises to be lots going on in these areas. You can look forward to seeing some CDIO activities at the upcoming AAEE Conference in Yepoon, hopefully including a CDIO workshop. Those of you involved in CDIO activities are encouraged to share your experiences at the conference. Ian Cameron hosted a live audio link to Ed Crawley (CDIO) at MIT for the Engineering Education Futures Forum at Twin Waters in March. It was quite an interactive and informative session. A number of CDIO round table discussions ensued after that. We were also fortunate to have John Hansman Jr (an MIT colleague of Ed Crawley’s and also involved in CDIO) visiting us at the time. John was able to contribute to much of the CDIO discussion at the Forum. Some late breaking news – at the recent CDIO conference in Ghent , the CDIO Council formally moved to recognise AAEE as a CDIO Affiliate. I believe that this is first relationship of its kind around the world. A reminder that you can find out more about the global CDIO Initiative at http://cdio.org Duncan Campbell AAEE CDIO Special Interest Group

Euan Lindsay

The AAEE website ( www.aaee.com.au   ) has undergone a number of significant changes and is well worth a visit.  If you have any news worthy items, or links that you believe to be relevant please notify our  webmaster, Euan Lindsay (e.lindsay@curtin.edu.au).

Useful Links and Other Sites of Interest

CASEE  -   a favourite site, a one stop shop: AaeE is affiliated with the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship in Engineering Education (CASEE) based inWashington  DC under the sponsorship of the US National Academy of Engineering. This is not a university based research Center but a center sponsored by the professional body to encourage and enable engineering educators to access the best  of research, innovation and practice. The website for CASEE  http://www.nae.edu/nae/caseecomnew.nsf   is a link to a wealth of information and resources. I would strongly recommend exploring  this site - whether your interest is in educational research, or research -based good teaching practice. Three portals link from the front page to: Engineering Education Researchers, providing  resources, both CASEE and external, for the engineering education researchers exploring the content, contexts, delivery, and people of engineering education.

Elizabeth Godfrey

You want to publish but are not sure where to start in the area of Engineering education?  From this portal I very much appreciated the link to Listings of Journals on Engineering and Science education - with comments about style, publication frequency etc...

You are thinking of an innovation? Don't reinvent the wheel, save time and check out what is already available. The portal for Engineering Education Innovators has a collection of resources, both CASEE and external, for innovators translating contemporary research from a variety of domains into educational modules and new paradigms in engineering education.

You just want to improve your teaching but not sure precisely what to do? Check out  the Engineering Education Practitioners portal where tools and references for current engineering faculty, instructors, and teachers to implement in the classroom and to improve their teaching styles, methods, and aptitude are provided.

CASEE also sponsors ongoing projects which are well worth putting on your Favourites list for dipping in to when (if?) you have a spare moment  - I especially like AREE which enables me to update myself on summarized versions of  current research and issues. Especially good for those who don’t have time to browse the journals on a regular basis.

Annals of Research on Engineering Education (AREE):

AREE is a CASEE sponsored online resource of journal articles aimed at the dissemination of findings to the classroom environment. In cooperation with numerous participating  journals, extended summaries, abstracts and discussion essays regarding relevant engineering education publications are presented. The core function of the site is then to promote discussion between readers and authors in identifying best practices, successful case studies, and refer to other useful resources

Peer Reviewed Research Offering Validation of Effective and Innovative Teaching ( PR2OVE-IT):

The PR2OVE-IT website is an evolving digital clearinghouse that summarizes the available research on educational interventions designed to enhance student learning, retention, and professional success in post-secondary engineering and other allied sciences. The online tool is divided into two major categories for searching and viewing information about articles: interventions (instructional practices) and outcomes (the main result(s) of the study). Each article chosen for inclusion in the database meets all five of the following criteria:

1. it had an educational intervention;
2. the intervention was at the undergraduate level;
3. the intervention was in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) field;
4. it discussed an outcome (no matter how anecdotal);
5. the outcome was related to improved learning or performance, retention, or assessment (and not simply student satisfaction).

There is probably something for everyone on this site – ENJOY ! Be stimulated!