Engineers need to be socially responsible, ethically aware and deliver positive contributions to the wicked problems² of today's global challenges. In navigating these challenges, being able to reflect is a necessary prerequisite. But if we simply ask students reflective questions, they tend to give us mostly socially desirable answers. Our university initiated an institute-wide program focused on creating learning experiences and environments for transformative reflection instead of superficial reflection. In this paper we present design principles for transformative reflection based on a literature overview and the program's accumulated experience. The principles are I) Six domains for reflection on engineering issues, II) The differentiation between the internal and external perspectives, III) Our approach to design for context-specificity of transformative reflective experiences, and IV) Four mechanisms that foster transformative reflection.

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This full paper reports on research into feedback perceptions. In recent years enrolment in Engineering Education went up and the number of international students increased, leading to larger classes and greater variety in prior education within the classroom. Literature review reveals large classes lead to fewer opportunities for students to interact with their teachers and receive high quality formative feedback. Feedback helps students to reflect on the quality of their work. Engineering Education is characterized by overloaded, heavily scaffolded curricula, and learning activities; it is paramount to provide students with feedback they perceive as useful and meaningful. The larger diversity in the classroom means there is a larger diversity in feedback perceptions that needs to be taken into account when providing feedback. In this work we present the preliminary outcomes of a study that was informed by the following research question: How do first-year bachelor students perceive feedback? We performed multiple semistructured interviews with 17 first-year students in computer science during their first semester, and aimed to collect data on the students' lived experiences and the spread of student realities, using a phenomenological approach. The preliminary results show that there are many essential aspects that influence students' feedback perceptions. Study shows that such aspects as large class and relationships with teacher play very important role in developing certain feedback perceptions amongst students.@en

The Charles Sturt University (CSU) Engineering programme is a new course (degree programmme) established in 2016 by a university that had not previously taught engineering. This start from scratch occasion was taken as an opportunity to build an all-new programme structure and philosophy. Students at CSU Engineering complete a sequence of three semester-long Project-Based Learning (PBL) style challenges across their time face-to-face at the university; after this point, they commence four yearlong paid industry-based work placements and continue studies in an online mode during evenings, weekends, and scheduled study days. The underlying technical curriculum for the engineering programme at Charles Sturt University is delivered mostly on-line via the RealizeIT platform and is based on a philosophy of just-in-time, self-directed learning. Students have freedom in deciding when, how and, to a large extent, which elements of the curriculum they engage within the online environment. This freedom, along with the PBL-style challenges, is enabled by the structure of the technical curriculum which is broken down into fine-grained learning activities called ‘topics’. In this paper, we summarise our experiences during the first four years, and the insights gained into student behaviours when offered an opportunity to engage in self-directed learning

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A reflection on receiving the Glenn Earthman Outstanding Dissertation Award and the contribution of ISEP as a professional organsation.@en

Contribution: This study reports on a reliable and valid instrument that measures engineering students' perceptions of their competency levels. A better understanding of students' needs in engineering curricula will support the development of engineering students' transversal competencies. Background: Prior research has investigated how engineering students perceive competency levels in transversal competencies. However, limitations in the competency definition, psychometric properties, and generalizability were found. Research questions: 1) What is the reliability and validity of the competency level instrument? and 2) what are the transversal competency level perceptions of engineering Bachelor and Master students? Methodology: A questionnaire consisting of 36 transversal competencies was designed based on an existing industry model and administered to 1087 engineering Bachelor and Master students from the University of Technology, The Netherlands. Validity and reliability were tested through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Cronbach's alpha. Findings: EFA resulted in five scales with reliable Cronbach's alpha values. CFA demonstrated a good model fit for the five-factor model with 25 items. Students perceived they are most competent in teamwork and lifelong learning competencies and less competent in entrepreneurial competencies.

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Objectives: Postgraduate trainee selection is a high-stakes process. While many studies focused on selection methods and psychometrics, little is known about the influence of selectors’ personal values and beliefs in the judgment and decision-making process. A better understanding of these factors is vital since selectors determine the future workforce. Methods: We interviewed programme directors (PDs) from 11 specialties in one University Hospital. Thematic analysis was conducted with a combined approach of generic and in-vivo coding. Results: PDs value excellence, ‘fit’ and personal characteristics. The content of these values are subject to personal interpretation and differ between PDs. PDs use various ‘proxies’ as alternative indicators of performance. They consider intuition, teamwork and autonomy important in judgement and decision-making. PDs find selection challenging and feel great accountability towards candidates and society. Conclusions: Selectors criteria of judgement- and decision-making often remain implicit and focus on prior achievements and ‘fit’ with the current trainee-pool, possibly compromising the workforce’s diversity. Implicit ‘proxies’ and intuitive decision-making may be an unwitting source of judgemental bias. ‘Making the implicit explicit’, by increasing awareness of personal values and beliefs and structuring the selection interview, may improve the quality of trainee selection.

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In engineering education students are increasingly challenged to solve complex socio-technological problems. However, there are many uncertainties in solving those 'ill-defined wicked problems'. For students, dealing with uncertainty is not easy to master. In the minor and master programmes of Science Education and Communication at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, living Labs ('C-labs') are used to teach students to deal with real-life complex communication problems in technological innovation processes. Students collaborate in teams of four persons, all from different technological disciplines. Each team works closely with professionals who face the problem in practice. In the C-labs, design methodology is used to approach the problems in a structured way. In this study we raise the question: how do students deal with uncertainties in solving complex problems in the C-labs? To answer this question we identified 3 sources of uncertainty: attributed to the individual, to the social context and to the task [7] and monitored the students during the design process by means of surveys and interviews. Data analysis shows that students perceive all 3 kinds of uncertainty in the various stages of the design process. They use of a broad variety of responses to tackle uncertainty. The outcomes can be used to improve our ways to help students to deal with uncertainties.

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Occupant satisfaction with IEQ (indoor environmental quality) is influenced by many physical and psychological factors. This paper reports the results of a study that investigate influential office design factors on occupant satisfaction relating environmental dimensions such as thermal and visual comfort in workplaces and predicting which design parameters may bring better satisfaction to occupants. Five office cases in the Netherlands with 579 office occupants were studied using questionnaires, and interviews with facility managers and architects. Different statistical analysis tests were conducted to summarise satisfaction factors. Results show that ‘desk location’ and ‘layout’ contributed most to occupant's satisfaction with thermal and visual comfort regardless of seasons. In summer, ‘orientation’ was exceptionally considered as an important factor for satisfaction with thermal comfort. This study revealed that categorical and regression analyses are required to predict profound outcomes when the data are nominal and categorical variables. This study contributes to develop design solutions, which could improve occupants' environmental satisfaction in workplaces.@en

Charles Sturt University makes its underpinning technical curriculum available to its students using an on-demand online system they call their Topic Tree. The tree is a directed acyclic graph where nodes represent topics to be learned, and edges represent the prerequisite relationships that exist between the topics. Branches on the topic tree represent concentrations in an area of knowledge, sub-branches (water quality, fluid mechanics, etc.) represent distinct subsets of knowledge - specialty. Delivery of the technical content is in three-hour modules, and students are free to choose the order in which they engage with these topics.
Previous work has identified that students engage with the on-demand curriculum much as they engage with on-demand entertainment platforms such as Netflix, completing long sequences of topics with short periods between them – the traditional “binge” model of consumption.
This paper presents a more fine-grained analysis of students’ pathways through the topic tree, focusing on the distance between successive topics completed by the students. Students’ progress is characterized by a three-dimensional framework – time, distance, and purpose.
In general, pathways through the tree fall into one of four patterns:
- Forward movement along a branch of the tree,
- Movement backward along a branch of the tree,
- Repeating the same topic,
- Switching to a different branch of the tree (backward distance to the junction of the branches combined with a forward distance along the new branch)
Different students engage with the topic tree using different combinations of these pathways, distance absolute distance traveled through the topics, and different time gaps between activities on the topics. This paper will identify the different combinations that can be found in the student log data.
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Motivation: Research shows that 15-20% of the population suffers from conditions that are classed as neurodiverse, which include ADHD, Autism, Depression, and Dyslexia. Evidence also shows that in engineering degrees neurodiverse students are overrepresented.
Neurodiverse people benefit from more awareness and support in their education. Their intellectual abilities are generally high to excellent. The problem in engineering education appears to occur in areas relating to transversal and organizational skills and the mismatched expectations of educational institutions. As a result, neurodiverse students are more likely to drop out.
Rationale:. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), obliges universities to ensure a proactive, inclusive educational environment; a reactive support network is no longer sufficient. Many universities in Europe have support networks in place, but not many universities train education staff in how to take into accounts the needs of students in curriculum design and delivery. Yet lecturers and curricula developers must also play their part in inclusivity.
Participant engagement:Participants will debate statements on adaptation and inclusivity in curriculum design and delivery and take part in brain storm session coming up with creative solutions to problems commonly experienced by neurodiverse students. It is endeauvoured to introduce real problems from the perspective of real (anonymous) neurodiverse students.
Takeaway: This workshop will provide educators with information and inspiration to create a more inclusive engineering education for neurodiverse students.
Significance for engineering education: By creating more neurodiverse friendly engineering education, overall student retention and success will go up, not only among neurodiverse students. This workshop will enhance understanding of the needs of neurodiverse students and the importance of taking their needs into account when designing the inclusive engineering education.@en

In today’s rapidly changing society, there is a growing demand for learning for innovation in organisations and engineering education. The increased global competition requires organisations and individuals to be qualified to quickly respond to changes in the market. Organisations and individuals must be capable of innovating - defining and solving novel, complex problems for which often no previous knowledge exists.
This paper is about microlearning as a format for learning in continuing engineering education to foster the use of authentic learning in dealing with real-world issues and innovation at the level of higher engineering education (HEE). The authors of this paper see learning as a contextual lifelong learning process which enables the construction of knowledge, finding new solutions to problems, creating connections between experiences, participation and learner control of the content and the process.
The microlearning method was developed to support predominantly informal learning activities in or close to the workplace, while avoiding the drawbacks of informality [3]. Microlearning helps to structure an on-demand approach to learning and performance in a flexible and self-directed way and facilitates organising short-cyclical learning practices at the workplace. From the experiences in the business environment it is assumed that microlearning has a lot of potential to stimulate the use of authentic learning in HEE [4]. Authentic learning practices in education have many benefits, as they bring real world problems, constraints and solution strategies in to the classroom. These learning practices though are not always easy to incorporate in existing teaching praxis, as they are time consuming, difficult to organise, expensive or too complicated. Microlearning supplies a format that help to facilitate authentic learning from a content and organizational point of view.
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In this study, the final part of an overarching project on curriculum design and implementation executed at Delft University of Technology is presented. The last step in this research is to establish how the students perceive their new curricula. To that end a survey was developed using standardized questions on self-determination, motivation, self-efficacy, engineering education attributes, doability and study load of the programme. In addition, measures of student progress were collected in a programme for Architecture and the Built Environment and electrical Engineering. Relationships between the variables were established, but the relationship with progress was not strong. There were significant differences between the programmes, some of which may have a relationship with the way the curriculum was designed.@en

Learning Analytics is a form of educational datamining that is used on the level of the classroom and the student. This information can be used to predict behaviour and address that, or it can be used for teachers and students to reflect on their learning processes and behaviour. Two examples of LA are presented: one with data from a VLE, one with student progress data and in these examples it is shown where the challenges for the near future of LA lay: there is a need for technology assessment of these technologies, the focus needs to be on learning and appropriate interventions to enhance learning, and on the teachers who are the real key players in the successful application of learning analytics to enhance learning. " Learning Analytics is about Learning, not about Analytics. " A reflection on the current state of affairs | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320016621_Learning_Analytics_is_about_Learning_not_about_Analytics_A_reflection_on_the_current_state_of_affairs [accessed Aug 20 2018].@en