Introduction

The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Engineering works in partnership with the UK engineering community to provide the best possible higher education learning experience for all students and contribute to the long term health of the engineering profession. As the national centre for all engineering academics in the UK, the Engineering Subject Centre delivers subject based support to promote quality learning and teaching.  The Centre achieves this by stimulating the sharing of good practice and innovation, thereby helping engineering academics to contribute to the best possible learning experience for their students. It provides a database of learning and teaching resources, a repository of Open Educational Resources for student and academic use, a series of teaching guides, and case studies in current issues.

Engineering is a rapidly changing subject area and the curriculum needs to be updated continually to keep abreast of research and development. Current issues influencing the Engineering curriculum include globalisation, employability of engineering graduates, internationalising the curriculum. These issues are coupled with the UK Government's drive to deliver a sustained increase in STEM graduates and satisfy the need for higher-level skills in these subjects.

Search for Design Studio assets specifically relevant to Engineering here.

Issues in curriculum design

Priorities for curriculum design in engineering are often focused by external drivers that include subject benchmarks and professional body requirements, employability and other graduate attributes.

Employer engagement

• The Engage project report concentrated on facilitating dialogue between employers and engineering, physical sciences and materials academics in higher education.  A search for related resources is available from the Centre's website and also the Centre's journal, Engineering Education.

Quality enhancement (including the SQE Themes)

• The Easimap Tool is a web-based tool developed to allow programme leaders to demonstrate coverage of intended learning outcomes across a programme and evidence how these learning outcomes are assessed.
• Education for sustainable development in engineering: a report of a Delphi consultation, (April 2008) undertook a modified ‘Delphi’ study to bring convergence of the views of experts from a range of engineering disciplines on sustainable development in the engineering curriculum.
• The Engineering Subject Centre's Guide to the Assessment of Learning Outcomes aims to support academics developing and designing programmes and assessments based on learning outcomes.
• There are other related resources available from the Centre's website and also the Centre's journal, Engineering Education.

Institutional approaches to learning design and departmental support

• The Engineering Subject Centre's Guide; Introduction to Learning and Teaching aims to be a brief introduction for those new to teaching and a refresher for experienced lecturers into the totality of parts that constitutes teaching in Higher Education.
• The Engineering Subject Centre's Guide; Learning and Teaching in Laboratories considers the practical challenges of designing laboratory learning within a modern engineering curriculum.

Staff and professional development

• The Engineering Subject Centre continuing professional developement offers examples of CPD opportunities for colleagues with all levels of experience of teaching in higher education.
• Support for new staff provides subject-based information and support, to complement that available via local staff development units, teaching departments or colleagues.

Issues in curriculum delivery

Engineering students engage in a wide range of learning activities that includes lab-based work, complex problem solving, design, project work, group working, work placements. 

Technologies employed for learning and teaching in Engineering include e-technologies such as audio feedback, virtual labs, web2.0 social media sites, and the use of virtual meeting technologies such as Elluminate. Computer Aided Design tools are widely used in engineering, and most students gain experience with these as part of their studies.

Innovative approaches to learning and teaching are emerging in Engineering around Enquiry Based Learning and the Centre's guide Introduction to Learning and Teaching contains a section about EBL.

Pedagogical models and approaches

• Approaches to the Teaching of Design is at the heart of what engineers do, and draws together all the skills and knowledge that we seek to foster in our students into an activity that has perhaps the greatest effect on society.
• Introduction to Pedagogic Research - a tool kit for engineering academics comprises a series of briefing papers linked to examples of pedagogic research and evaluation from the engineering disciplines.
• The Engineering Subject Centre's Guide; Education Theories on Learning has an informal tone to make it as accessible as possible for those who are new to education research. Each section provides a brief introduction to the tool, including a case study example and further reading.

The Engineering Subject Centre also has asset collections on the Design Studio relating to:

Employability and work based learning in Engineering

Supporting the Learning Experience in Engineering

Assessment and feedback for Engineering