Professional development at university: student perceptions of professional engineering practice
Year: 2008
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: : This study examined student perceptions regarding professional engineering practice. We surveyed secondary school students attending engineering camps, engineering students in their first and fourth years, graduate engineers and experienced engineers to ascertain their impressions about what constitutes the daily activities of a professional engineer. We asked respondents to rate 39 aspects of engineering practice identified from the research later reported in (Trevelyan 2008). These aspects were rated by the participants according to their perception of the importance and the frequency encountered in engineering practice. We also asked where the participants learned or where they believed they were going to learn how to perform the various tasks associated with these aspects. We grouped the aspects into six functional themes; technical skills, technical knowledge, management, teamwork, communication, and interpersonal skills. We found that student perceptions of professional engineering practice changed significantly as they progressed from year ten, through first and onto fourth year engineering at university. Year ten students rated technical knowledge as highly important to engineering practice, with relatively low ratings given to the other five areas. It may be argued that this corresponds reasonably with general public perception of professional engineering activity. First year engineering students realised the importance of communication and management skills in
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W38618166