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The Australasian Association for Engineering Education

NEWSLETTER - 7 May 2010

President's Message - Seminar Series

Members, most of us are now in the eye of the Hurricane - lectures have finished, and exams are about to start, so we have a couple of moments to pause and consider what our plans are for the winter break.

Articles in this Month's Newsletter:

  1. AAEE Seminar Series Continues
  2. CDIO Special Interest Group
  3. Nominations Now Open for 2010 AaeE Awards
  4. ERA Rankings for Engineering Education Journals
  5. Report from ERM
  6. About the Author - Dr Llewellyn Mann
  7. Call for Contributions to AaeE 2010
  8. Call for Photographs

Euan Lindsay

AAEE Seminar Series Continues

In 2009 our ERM group presented a series of seminars entitled "Engineering Education Research and Your Career". These seminars were well received throughout the country, and there was a clear demand for future seminars to assist engineering academics along the path of engineering education research.

One topic that is an essential part of the process, but often unfamiliar to engineers, is the Human Research ethics process. As such our second series of seminars will be focussed upon gaining ethics approval for your project: why you need it, when you need it, how you get it, and who in your local institution can help you with the approval process.

We're looking for expressions of interest from those who would like to host a seminar in their institution or city; if you would like to be part of the series, let the president know at e.lindsay@curtin.edu.au.

Euan Lindsay

CDIO Special Interest Group

The 6th International CDIO Conference will be running from the 15th to the 18th of June, hosted at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Quebec, Canada. For those who haven't been to a CDIO conference, they have a similar feel to the AAEE conferences in size, themes and community. There are currently 250 registrants with around 150 participants enrolled in the introductory workshops. This conference sees a number of innovations including round table discussion sessions, elevator pitches, and the CDIO Academy where students come in and compete in a design and build exercise as part of the conference. I will also be continuing the discussion around internationalisation and mobility. The conference website is http://cdio.polymtl.ca/index.htm.

The Fall 2010 CDIO Collaborator's meeting will this year run in conjunction with AAEE 2010 at the University of Technology Sydney. A number of the advanced CDIO workshops are included in the program plus the regional collaborator's meetings and the CDIO Council meetings. The final day of CDIO meetings will be held on the day after the AAEE conference and hosted at the University of Sydney. The CDIO community welcomes all to attend these meetings.

Finally, CDIO has a new global website with a new look and feel, and new functionality, at http://www.cdio.org.

Duncan Campbell, Chair, AAEE CDIO Special Interest Group

Nominations Now Open for 2010 AaeE Awards

The general mission of AaeE is to improve the quality, relevance and performance of engineering education in Australasia. The AaeE Engineering Education Excellence Awards allow us to identify, showcase and reward the work of our members committed to fostering excellence and innovation in engineering education. The categories are closely aligned to those of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Awards, but they are just as relevant for the New Zealand based Teaching Awards.

The four Awards for 2010, to be presented at the AaeE Annual Conference in Sydney from 5-8 December, are:

  • One AaeE Teaching Excellence Award of value $2000
  • Three AaeE Awards for Programs that Enhance Excellence in Learning, each of value $2000, comprising one Award in each of the following categories: Innovation in curricula, learning and teaching; Educational Partnerships and collaboration with other organisations; and Outreach Services.

There will also be Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in Engineering. Up to five will be awarded, with a trophy but no monetary Award. One citation will be reserved as an encouragement award for an academic who has been teaching for less than five years.

In response to feedback that many academics find it difficult to compile a complete portfolio during the busy semester, the application process will be in two rounds with limited documentation called for in the first round, and further documentation requested from selected finalists. Finalists will be expected to showcase their work in a presentation at the 2010 AaeE conference in Sydney. Applications are due by 13 August, 2010. Please see the AaeE website for selection criteria and application forms.

ERA Rankings for Engineering Education Journals

The results are back from the ERA's ranking exercise, and some of the Engineering Education journals have done very well out of the process. For a summary of which of our discipline's journals ranked where, visit http://aaee-scholar.pbworks.com/Journals-ranking-for-ERA.

Euan Lindsay

Report from ERM

At the last AaeE conference in Adelaide, the ERM group hosted a breakfast for people interested in discussing educational research and to start developing a community of practice within the larger AaeE community. Everyone that attended was asked to write on the back of their business card the issues or topics they were particularly interested in investigating.

An overarching theme for everyone was the effective evaluation of teaching innovations, particularly using valid and rigorous methods and results. Of particular note was the validity of assessing individuals within team learning environments, the focus of an ALTC grant lead by Dr Prue Howard at CQUniversity with Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria University, The University of Melbourne and Aalborg University as partners. This will be the main theme for the ERM stream at this year's conference.

Another major point of interest was in transition strategies for students into first year, including students articulating from other programs and pathways (such as TAFE) as well as school leavers. Embedding sustainability into engineering education in a meaningful way was also of interest, particularly when integrated into professional practice. Transdisciplinarity also was of interest, following on from last year's ERM theme, as was strengthening reflection in undergraduate students and ways to foster creativity.

Finally was the issue of graduate attributes and academic standards. This is the focus of an ALTC Grant lead by Professor David Dowling at the University of Southern Queensland with the University of Tasmania as a partner. The question of academic standards is also being investigated in an ALTC project lead by Professor Robin King at the University of Technology, Sydney along with The Australian Council of Engineering Deans and many other partners.

Let's continue these discussions leading up to and at Sydney!

Dr Llewellyn Mann

About the Author

Dr Llewellyn Mann is the Educational Research and Scholarship Coordinator for the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology. He completed a PhD in the area of engineering education focusing on sustainable design, undertook postdoctoral research in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University in the US, and is a co-investigator on the ALTC project "Assessing individual learning in teams: developing an assessment model for practice based curricula in engineering". His current research interest focuses on professional becoming and how students develop their professional identities as engineers.

Call for contributions to AaeE 2010

AaeE2010: Past, Present, Future - the keys to engineering education research and practice. 5-8 December 2010, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. http://aaee2010.com.au

Note: Deadline for full paper submission extended to 16 July, 2010. Submission is through Easychair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aaee2010

The conference this year will also be run in conjunction with the Fall CDIO Collaborator's meeting. Submissions are invited from academics, support staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students, librarians, professional engineers, employers and anyone else who has a vested interest in fostering excellence and innovation in engineering education.

Types of Submission:

  • Scholarship of Teaching papers - presenting work on the conference theme, within the context of existing case studies and relevant literature. Suggested structure: Background, Method, Benefits and Issues, Evidence of Success, Reflections/Recommendations, References.
  • Scholarship of Discovery papers - on both completed and ongoing engineering education research activity, addressing context/background, significant findings from other research, research questions, theoretical framework, methodology, major findings/conclusions and recommendations.
  • Workshops - 90 minute activity based sessions with the emphasis on high levels of attendee participation.
  • Undergraduate Poster Competition - undergraduate students are encouraged to submit an abstract for a poster on the best way to improve engineering education at their own institution.

Authors of both types of papers will be asked to give a 10 minute presentation, with full papers being double blind peer reviewed and published in the proceedings. All paper submissions will be reviewed by at least 2 members of the conference peer-review panel. See the conference website at http://aaee2010.com.au.

Call for Photographs

The Conference Committee is also calling on all members of our community to send interesting photographs taken at any previous AaeE conference to aaeeconference2010@uts.edu.au.