Curriculum renewal to enhance the acquisition of professional skills and engagement with professional practice across engineering programs

One of the major requirements of today's employers is for their new hires to have excellent communication and professional skills. These skills include writing, speaking, listening, presenting, working in multidisciplinary teams, engaging in life-long learning, and exhibiting professional and ethical behavior. These skills have been clearly identified by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology as being essential for all engineering graduates, but tend to be very difficult to teach and embed in the curriculum. This paper describes how to structure an introductory course in the major that would help to teach communication and professional practice skills in the context of the student's chosen major. The objectives of this course are to provide students with an exposure to the entire domain of the discipline in order to set the stage for the remaining curriculum, and to develop the students' skills in, and awareness, sensitivity, and understanding of professional practice and communication skills.

Prior to 2009 students in the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Adelaide developed their management and professional practice skills in an unpopular stand-alone course “Engineering Management and Professional Practice (EMPP)”. The intended learning outcomes of this course were, however, synergistic with those of the final year “Honours Project” and so the two courses were strategically combined. This amalgamation (which is still referred to as the “Honours Project”) has developed into a successful scaffolded, authentic, engineering problem based learning course that: motivates and engages over 200 participating students; effectively outreaches to both primary and secondary schools; attracts vibrant and enthusiastic industry interaction; draws significant news and media coverage as the University showcases and creates a nexus between the research and the professional communities. It represents the coordinated sustained efforts by a team of over 50 academic and professional staff within the School of Mechanical Engineering, the Faculty of Engineering Computer and Mathematical Sciences and the University administrative services; which include the Media and Strategic Communications office, and the offices of the Vice Chancellor (VC) and the Deputy Vice Chancellor-Academic (DVCA). This paper discusses the background and evolution of the integrated Honours Project (Mech. Eng. 4143). Importantly, responses of key stakeholders, to the course work and outcomes are examined. These stakeholders include current students, industry, community members and academics. Suggestions for continued evolution and improvements will also be discussed.

Problem: Medical student participation in research enhances appreciation of the scientific literature and the conduct of investigation, and may lead to an interest in academic medicine. Independent medical student research offers frequently overlooked opportunities to develop and assess professional practice abilities, including project design and implementation, interprofessional team communication, and time management. These skills, useful to physicians, are often challenging for medical students to master as they transition into clinical careers. To address this challenge, we designed and embedded interventional modalities into a highly mentored and longitudinal scholarly concentration component of the curriculum. Intervention: The Embark scholarly concentration program incorporates traditional research training with the development of professional practice skills essential for transitioning to clinical practice. The program includes individualized and just-in-time components enabling student access to information and feedback specific to their projects and development of professional practice skills. Context: The Embark program is a required longitudinal component of the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine undergraduate medical curriculum. The Embark program consists of courses that inform and facilitate a required longitudinal independent research project. Outcome: A retrospective evaluation of the Embark program’s success with development of professional practice skills through the lens of both faculty and student perceptions included analysis of project records and course evaluation feedback. Evaluation of individual student development of transitional skill ability is possible through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data collected from student project records. More than 80% of course evaluation commentary on strengths of the program addressed activities related to professional practice skills. To systematize the evaluation of these data sources, we have piloted a framework, iSAIL, designed to assess student development in these skills during the planning and conduct of a research project. Lessons learned: By developing professional practice skills in the context of a scholarly concentration program, medical students can build a foundation for future engagement in research while they develop skills to overcome challenges that they are likely to encounter in their clinical careers. Modalities designed to evaluate individualized student development of professional practice skills through research participation define program successes and may lead to the identification of additional resources needed by students. By offering medical students opportunities to develop professional practice skills within the protected environment of an independent research project, this scholarly concentration program provides a valuable opportunity to influence the early development of skills necessary throughout their clinical careers.

Social workers need to have certain skills to provide the best services for their clients. Therefore, assessing the status of professional practice skills of social work students in practice is a necessary task that can help managers of training institutions to have timely accurate information on the quality of training to change and adjust to improve the quality of training. On the other hand, the results of the research on practical skills of social work students will also help schools to review the connection and orientation between training institutions and the actual requirements of professional activities. This study aims to discover the status of professional practice skills of social work students in Vietnam. 174 students studying social work at the Colleges of Social Work in Thua Thien Hue, Soc Trang, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City participated in the survey. A questionnaire and a situational judgement test are used to survey the performance of professional practice skills of social work students during their internship. The results of the study show that performance of professional practice skills of social work students during the internship initially is quite well. The professional practice skills performed best by students are the client access and assessment and self-test and self-assessment skills. The skills that students did not perform well are connecting resources and making support plans. Therefore, the academic subjects related to client support services should be paid more attention to in the training program. The author also recommends that training institutions strengthen exchanges between social work experts and students to help students improve their professional skills.

The literature of higher education widely notes the importance of reflection and reflective practice as a critical aspect of professional practice. This enables learners to act and think professionally by combining theory and practice. As such, many teaching and learning strategies and activities to enhance reflection have been incorporated into professional degrees. Notwithstanding the support for reflective practice, critical reflection remains a contested concept with a lack of consensus as to its definition and best practice. The frameworks chosen by higher institutions may be influenced by course context, ideology and expectations around the course/unit learning outcomes. This paper commences with a discussion of reflection and critical reflection. By examining different notions of reflection, the paper will discuss why the concept of critical reflection is important for practitioners in the 21st Century. It is advanced that critical reflection can encourage learners to better understand professional practice by linking discipline knowledge and theories to professional practice and wider insights. Whilst reflective practice is a desirable capability for law graduates, legal education in Australia largely fails to incorporate and assess critical reflective skills, as it is directed at producing a technically skilled and ideologically compliant legal workforce. The authors advance that adherence to a solely doctrinal approach to legal education is no longer justified in the 21st Century, which is characterised by profound change and uncertainty that impacts on the legal profession and society at large. Law schools have a positive role to play in the education of their students through instilling doctrinal knowledge, professional practice skills and critical thinking skills, which foster an understanding and analysis from multiple perspectives, to ensure that law graduates are able to holistically understand the reasons for changes within their profession and effectively adapt to change through informed choices. The final part of the paper outlines how critical reflection can be implemented in legal education.

University of Michigan Medical School

To explore the influence of current learning traditions in nursing on the development of reflection and critical reflection as professional practice skills and to offer suggestions for nursing education that will specifically facilitate the development of critical reflection. ORGANIZATIONAL CONSTRUCTS: Mezirow's transformative learning theory, Barrows conceptualization of problem-based learning (PBL). Integrative literature review of published literature related to nursing, health science education and professional education from 1983-2000. Professional education scholars concur that specialized knowledge is clearly essential for professional practice, however, they also suggest that self-consciousness (reflection) and continual self-critique (critical reflection) are crucial to continued competence. While strategies to facilitate reflection have been outlined in the literature, specific strategies to facilitate the development of critical reflection and implications for nursing education are much less clear. Advocates of reflective and critically reflective practice suggest that the development of these abilities should be inextricably linked to professional development and can be developed through active repeated guided practice. In health care, PBL based on constructivism, has been identified as one way to facilitate the development of these skills. Nursing learners exposed to PBL develop the ability to be reflective and critically reflective in their learning and acquire the knowledge and skill within the discipline of nursing by encountering key professional practice situations as the stimulus and focus of their classroom learning. The learners' ability to be both reflective and critically reflective in their learning is developed by critical questioning of the faculty tutor during situational analysis, learning need determination, application of knowledge, critique of resources and personal problem-solving processes, and summarization of what was learned.

A dramatic increase in engineering student participation during the last decade indicates heightened student and faculty interest in engineering service experiences. The first step towards understanding why students are drawn to such opportunities is to examine how students perceive engineering service experiences as an important source of learning technical and professional skills involved in the engineering disciplines. The following study investigates how students compare their service experience with their traditional coursework experience as a source of learning professional and technical skills in engineering. Students’ perception of where they learned professional and technical knowledge or skills provides an insight into the potential impact service-based interventions creates. This study compares service experiences with traditional coursework-based learning to examine the impact of service on students’ perception of learning sources. Students participating in an eclectic and large variety of engineering service experiences were surveyed. Engineering students on average identified that 45% of what they have learned about technical skills and 62% of what they have learned about professional skills was gained through their engineering service experience. Female students credited service experiences as their source of both professional and technical skills significantly higher than male students, and were consistent across academic years. Engineering students’ perceive service-based learning experiences, relative to their traditional course-based learning, to significantly impact what they know about technical and professional engineering outcomes.

University of Arizona College of Medicine: Tucson and Phoenix

INTRODUCTION: When working in the fields of loss, grief, bereavement and dying, the lived experience of the social work students, and their developing practice in the field, can be enhanced by awareness of the concept of the wounded healer. METHODS: This study sought to explore the wounded healer concept amongst Australian social work students who had experienced the death of a loved one. The project was underpinned by a phenomenological approach seeking to understand personal loss experiences in professional practice skill development. Using semi-structured interviews, final-year social work students were asked to reflect on the positive and negative impacts of their personal loss experience on their emerging professional social work practice. FINDINGS: An analysis of the data identified three main themes: (1) repeated triggers of loss and grief during field placement can occur; (2) students’ ambiguity and confusion of safe inclusion of lived experience in a professional setting was identified; and (3) learning can be impacted by wounded reflections. CONCLUSION: The study noted a lack of understanding among social work students on how to safely navigate their own woundedness and how to incorporate awareness into their professional practice skills. This may be addressed by responding to a current gap in the Australian social work curriculum. Future considerations for reflections on the effectiveness of field placement supervision and further guidance and education for wounded social work students at a university level may assist.

There is an increasing demand from employers and stakeholders for chemical engineering graduates to have a range of professional skills in addition to their chemical engineering knowledge. For chemical engineering to continuously flourish as a discipline, our graduates will need to demonstrate professional skills at a higher level. Chemical engineering graduates are expected to be good in communicating in various forms, able to work in teams, able to solve problems, able to manage time well and continue to learn (life-long learning). These professional skills are more likely to be developed within the students if the skills are embedded into the curriculum, rather than taught in separate classes. It is essential for engineering courses to implement teaching and learning approaches that can help students to not only learn the content and at the same time develop crucial professional skills. The Introduction to Engineering course is designed to stimulate students' passion and strengthen their motivation for further engineering studies as well as enhancing their technical knowledge and relevant professional skills. This 3-hour credit course is required for all first-year chemical engineering students in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. First year experience in the introductory engineering course was enhanced by competitive challenges, student-centred learning activities, problem solving and seminars that strengthen the development of students' technical knowledge and professional skills. The objective of this study is to determine the effect of an integrated teaching and learning approach on the professional skills development among first year chemical engineering students for three consecutive years. To study the impact of the course, the students were asked to write reflective journals on what they have learnt. The three years' data, Semester 2012/2013, Semester 2013/2014 and Semester 2014/2015 were collected from reflective journals written by students of different batch. Using thematic analysis, four main professional skills were identified from the reflective journals, namely team working, communication, problem solving and time management skills. The results consistently indicate that the introductory course allows students to engage in engineering practice and provide an early start to ensure engineering graduates are equipped with a broader set of professional skills and greater experience of addressing 'real' engineering problems. It was concluded that the integrated teaching and learning approach in Introduction to Engineering course is effective in promoting positive professional skills development among engineering students.

The studio is a core strand of design education, and working with real clients is one of the most valuable ways for students to develop their professional design practice skills. The book is a practical guide to working on real-life briefs in the design studio - how to collaborate with and connect to communities, find and retain clients, and manage real-world design problems. Using tools and frameworks based on years of research and experience, students can develop their professional skills in a supportive environment. The book is divided into four sections: - Why (industry connections, experiential learning, personal empowerment) - What (engaging with communities, client work, structure) - Who (work roles, client relationships, articulating value) - How (launching, logistics, planning) The final section of the book covers information for those expanding into student-led studios, and includes information on strategies, financing and how to plan for the future. Supported by a companion website featuring downloads and resources for both students and instructors.

Employers lament that science graduates, particularly engineering students, lack professional skills, despite increasing emphasis on teaching professional skills in their curriculum. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior as an overarching framework, one explanation for skill development gaps may be students’ attitude towards learning professional skills. Our study purpose was to create a scale that accurately and consistently measures engineering students’ attitudes towards learning professional skills. To create the scale, we used a rigorous measurement development methodology, beginning with survey item generation and critical review by subject matter experts. Data from a sample of 534 engineering college students were split into two sets to provide (1) a development sample upon which exploratory factor analyses and parallel analyses were conducted to form the initial scale, and (2) a confirmatory sample whereby we verified the scale structure and obtained initial validity evidence for distinct dimensions. A five-factor scale of 25 items for assessing engineering students’ attitudes towards learning professional skills (ATLPS) obtained high-reliability estimates. Validity evidence supported five distinct dimensions in leadership in teams, communication, civic and public engagement, cultural adaptability, and innovation. The ATLPS can be used to facilitate improvements in engineering education and research by understanding students’ attitudes towards learning professional skills. Furthermore, researchers can expand the scale to include additional dimensions of professionalism and modify items to fit STEM disciplines where professional skill training is essential.

BackgroundEngineers must acquire increasing technical and professional skills to meet pressing global challenges, but fitting training for these skills into already crowded curricula is difficult. Engineering service may provide opportunities to gain such skills; however, prior research about learning outcomes from such activities has been primarily small‐scale, anecdotal, or lacking a comparison group.Purpose/HypothesisWe aim to understand whether self‐reported learning outcomes differ between engineers involved and not involved with engineering service activities. Specifically, do the two groups experience and learn different technical and professional skills in their engineering activities?Design/MethodWe used a sequential mixed methods approach that began with interviews and focus groups with 165 participants and continued with a questionnaire administered to over 2,500 engineering students and practicing engineers both involved and not involved with engineering service. Analyses included variable‐oriented qualitative analysis and multiple linear regression models to compare perceived technical and professional skills.ResultsQuantitative results show that engineers involved and not involved with engineering service report comparable perceived technical skills, and that those involved in engineering service report significantly higher perceived professional skills, even when controlling for age, gender, and grade point average. Qualitative results indicate that higher professional skills can be partially attributed to the realistic, complex, and contextualized learning experiences within engineering service activities.ConclusionsEngineers involved with engineering service may gain strong professional engineering skills that do not compromise their technical skills. Thus, engineering service may help educate the type of engineers the field needs to confront pressing global challenges.

BackgroundMedical education has predominantly adhered to a process-based education model. Recently, outcome-based education (OBE) has emerged as a dominant pedagogical framework, facilitating simultaneous acquisition of theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and clinical experience. In 2020, our medical school implemented a new curriculum designed to integrate clinical skills training and experiential learning with foundational knowledge from the first year. Herein, we evaluated whether the clinical competencies of New Curriculum Students (NCS) are superior to the clinical competencies of Traditional Curriculum Students (TCS). Specifically, we clarified how self-assessment scores related to competencies in “Professional practice skills” evolved over time, and analyzed the longitudinal trends in self-assessment scores.MethodsWe included TCS enrolled between 2016 and 2019, and NCS enrolled between 2020 and 2023. Self-assessment of students’ competencies in “Professional practice skills,” a core component of our institution’s competency framework, was conducted by online survey. Competency levels were categorized into Levels A, B, and C.ResultsThe self-assessment scores of NCS were significantly higher than those of TCS across most competency domains of “Professional practice skills.” The “Medical interview and physical examination” competency revealed that first-year NCS achieved scores equivalent to those of fourth-year TCS. These scores were either maintained or improved as students progressed in years. In the “Clinical skills” competency, NCS outperformed TCS at all levels from the first to the third year, and at Level A in the fourth year. In the “Medical record charting” competency, NCS achieved significantly higher scores than TCS across all levels during the first and second years.DiscussionThe early acquisition of clinical skills and exposure to clinical practice enabled students to consistently maintain high self-assessment scores. A curriculum design aligned with OBE appears to foster a heightened sense of self-efficacy among students. This approach is anticipated to facilitate a seamless transition into clinical responsibilities as future physicians.