Gillian Nicola Saunders-Smits

• Dr. Ir.
• Professor (Associate) at Delft University of Technology

With robots becoming an increasingly constant feature in daily life, we must prepare and educate current and future generations. Although robotics outreach and robotics education are not new in engineering education, many educators and outreach providers face the same hurdles when using educational robots: Educational robots are expensive to buy, c...

With robots becoming an increasingly constant feature in daily life, we must prepare and educate current and future generations. Although robotics outreach and robotics education are not new in engineering education, many educators and outreach providers face the same hurdles when using educational robots: Educational robots are expensive to buy, c...

As the field of Engineering Education Research (EER) is maturing, the volume of EER literature is growing. Combined with increasing data analysis possibilities and a trend towards more transparent, reproducible literature reviews, more rigourous approaches to literature reviews such as the systematic review (SLR) are needed. The increased use of SL...

The increasing global demand for robotics expertise led the Delft University of Technology to launch a two-year Master of Science programme in Robotics in 2020. The programme was designed to educate versatile robotics engineers capable of overseeing the entire process from conception of robotics systems to implementation. The curriculum integrates...

In 2020, a new two-year MSc programme in robotics was launched. Unlike most existing robotics programmes, which approach robotics from a specific discipline, this programme aims to train multi-deployable robot generalists using a cognitive approach (no hardware creation). The field of robotics is multidisciplinary by nature and educating students o...

The amount of literature that focuses on diversity and inclusion within engineering education continues to grow. However, research traditionally focuses on gender, and despite the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) being passed in 2016, there is still a lack of work which describes the experience of student...

Grounding the design of educational interventions and their analysis in theory allows us to understand and interpret results of interventions and advance educational theories. Moreover, building an understanding of which educational theories are used and how they are used can build a consensus among researchers and mature the research in a field. I...

Professional development (PD) is a key element for enhancing the quality of academic teaching. An increasing number of PD activities have moved to blended and online formats, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the desire, potential, and need for collaboration among educators to learn from innovative and best practices, several instituti...

Increasing student numbers in higher education, particularly in engineering and computer science, make it difficult for motivated lecturers to continue engaging in active teaching methods such as Flipped Classrooms and Work-Based Learning. In these settings, digital Peer Assessment can be one approach to provide effective and scalable feedback. In...

The gender divide for women in the engineering domain in academia is still very large today, even though most institutions are committed to changing this. Although there are slow improvements in the number of women working in academic positions in Engineering, the Netherlands, in particular, is still lagging badly behind the rest of Europe with wom...

This workshop is part of the ERASMUS+ project: RAPIDE: on Relevant Assessment and pedagogies for Inclusive Digital Education (https://rapide-project.eu) and is open to anyone who is interested in implementing or improving peer assessment in their courses. At the end of the workshop, participants will be able to make an informed decision on a suitab...

In March 2020 COVID-19 brought the world and with that aviation to a standstill. Also in March 2020, the third run of the DelftX MOOC Introduction to Aerospace Structures and Materials started on edX. This MOOC generally attracts a mixture of young aviation enthusiasts (often students) and aviation professionals. Given the large interest MOOCs have...

Most studies in engineering education focus on the effectiveness of the teaching interventions and what transversal competencies engineering students gain from those interventions immediately after they take place. This study explores the effectiveness of an existing game-based learning activity and the competency retention of the participating stu...

Recent research by KU Leuven showed that 33% of the engineering graduates in Flanders changed jobs in the first year, with 60% of those citing job content as a reason. Also, industry often reports that recent graduate hires lack the right skills for the job. It appears that students seem to enter the labour market less prepared both in perception a...

Although accreditation bodies emphasise communication competencies development in engineering curricula due to its importance for future engineers, the focus is often mainly on oral presentation and written reports. A communication activity was created to practice and reflect on students’ communication competencies including describing information...

To assist in resolving the perceived lack of transversal competencies (TCs) of engineering graduates by industry, this study investigates the characteristics of transforming an existing industry TC instrument for use in engineering education. The instrument consists of 36 nuanced sub-competencies with the corresponding definitions and descriptive m...

This year, 2020, the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands celebrates its 80th birthday. This paper describes the history of the department since its founding in early 1940, just before the start of World War II in the Netherlands, until present day. The paper will highlight how its research and educa...

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 engineerin...

Recent research by KU Leuven showed that 33% of their engineering graduates changed jobs in the first year, with 60% of those citing job content as a reason. Also, industry often reports that recent graduate hires lack the right skills for the job [2]. It appears that students seem to enter the labour market less prepared both in perception and ski...

As the field of Engineering Education Research is maturing, more and more literature on Engineering Education is becoming available. Combined with increasing digitization and data analysis possibilities in the area of educational research literature, as well as a trend towards requiring more transparent and reproducible literature studies, research...

More than 30% of engineering graduates switch jobs in their first year after graduation. To assist young engineers in their career choices, three European universities, industry and other stakeholders in the PREFER Project on the Professional Roles and Employability of Future Engineers developed an engineering model to aid young engineers to find a...

Although aerospace traditionally has always had a multidisciplinary approach to engineering and design, the increasing complexity of aircraft and spacecraft and the rapid digitization within the aerospace industry has led to a large number of related engineering and scientific disciplines such as electrical engineers, computer scientist to work muc...

This is the slide deck of the workshop entitled the ART of Literature Reviews on different type of literature reviews that can be used in research to assist graduate students in becoming more proficient in managing this often daunting part of their research

The purpose of this systematic review is to evaluate the state-of-the-art of competency measurement methods with an aim to inform the creation of reliable and valid measures of student mastery of competencies in communication, lifelong learning, innovation/creativity and teamwork in engineering education. We identified 99 studies published in three...

This was a workshop to create more awareness of the needs of neurodiverse students in engineering education. 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 a...

The importance of which transversal competencies, a collective term for non-technical competencies such as problem-solving and communication skills, are required for student success in the labor market has been studied. There is no doubt that students need transversal competencies for professional practice. However, little is known about the specif...

Engineering education has recognised that engineering graduates require transversal competencies like communication, teamwork and problem-solving alongside technical competencies. The importance of transversal competencies has grown and curriculum elements have been implemented to stimulate these competencies. However, a gap still exists between wh...

An often heard complaint is the inability of students to apply their learning at a higher level in Bloom’s taxonomy. However, the challenge in teaching basic forensic engineering prin- ciples to students and achieving a higher Bloom’s learning hierarchy is time. As a Master’s elective course within a two-year Aerospace Engineering curriculum, limit...

This is a video presentation on the topic of neuro diversity in Engineering Education which was presented at the European Convention of Engineering Deans in Trondheim, Norway 27-29 May 2018 You can view the video via this link: https://youtu.be/IBg063-AqtI

The globalization and the great change in technology of the 1990’s brought a particular importance in developing transversal competences (Shuman, 2005). ERI-Net defined transversal competences as “skills, values and attitudes that are required for learners’ holistic development and for learners to become capable of adapting to change” (Care 2016),...

Although there is high degree of agreement on the importance of transversal skills for engineers, employers observe a significant gap between expectations and reality. This paper discusses the need for the development of a framework of professional roles for future engineers and the implementation of dedicated skills education in engineering curric...

Keynote given at the UK and Ireland Engineering Education Research Network annual meeting in York in 2016 on the skills gap in engineering graduates

When teaching Engineering to students it is important that we not only teach about how to engineer new things but also look at the failures and performance problems from an engineering point-of-view. The field that studies this part of engineering is known as Forensic Engineering. At the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Techn...

Large classroom sizes are a reality university educators need to contend with, particularly in the first year of a given cohort within a degree programme. Activating and engaging students in these large classroom environments present numerous sets of challenges. These challenges are exacerbated by student learning development needs in the early sta...

Blended education, or "flipping the classroom" is rapidly becoming a mainstream form of teaching within universities. Within Engineering Education, it is popular as it allows more time in-class to focus on hands on activities such as demonstrations and solving complex problems. This paper discusses the effort conducted to re-structure, according to...

This keynote compares Curriculum Design to Aircraft Design. It also highlights the mutual lack of understanding between engineering educators and educationalist due to the different definitions of the same words. It shows that both have more in common than either parties will admit and that if curriculum design in engineering education is approache...

Students when approaching their thesis work are becoming increasingly mobile, planning to their thesis in industry or research institutes abroad. Combined with the freedom in planning that many students at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering enjoy, students are starting their thesis at any time during the year. As a result there is an increasing d...

This paper relates the experiences of lecturers at Delft University of Technology in the designing and running of a Master course in Forensic Engineering. Rather than traditional face-to-face lectures, use of real-life evidence-based learning was made in the form of training for and execution of a mock aircraft accident investigation. The culminati...

The implementation of the Bologna Process in the Netherlands meant that all universities had to redesign their curriculum to meet the 2-tier system requirement of having a Bachelor and a Master. Until such time most university degrees were 4 – 6 year Master degrees with a broad base typically lasting anywhere between 2.5 and 4 years followed by a s...

At Delft University of Technology several pilots in running individual Master courses fully online have been held. Essential during those pilots was the communication between staff and students as there was no physical contact possible. Within the pilots use was made of the communication possibilities within the electronic learning environment of t...

The TU Delft has the ambition to transform a considerable number of its masters programmes into an online distance learning (ODE) model. This paper will discuss these developments from three perspectives: a) the market for online education and rapid changes, b) the policies of TU Delft including its high ambitions for the coming years and c) a desc...

These days a university can no longer afford to only deliver its courses face-to-face. Many universities record their lectures, offer online courses, offer free educational content online to al using OpenCourseWare (OCW) or even run and assess complete courses for anyone who is willing to participate via the principle of Massive Open Online Courses...

Over the past four years the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has redeveloped its BSc curriculum to mimic an engineering design cycle. Each semester represents a step in the design cycle: exploration; system design; sub-system design; test, analysis & simulation; verification & validation. In the...

In today's output defined society, alumni are the output of higher education. This article shows how alumni research can be used as an important indicator of curriculum quality. This relatively unexplored area of engineering education research in Europe is highlighted using a case study carried out in the Netherlands, the outcomes of which have ser...

Individually grading group design exercises is a difficult thing for lecturers to carry out. This becomes even more complicated if many different lecturers are involved. One way of ensuring uniform assessment is the use of rubrics. This article relates to an innovative form of grading using rubrics in the grading of the capstone design project of t...

The research – teaching nexus at universities has over the recent years slid too much towards teaching students just knowledge and not always teaching them how to do independent research. If research does occur it is often only in the post graduate phase (MSc or PhD) of education. This paper describes an example of the implementation of research in...

This paper tells of the development of a course designed to help students set up their own operations research projects. The course was taught in a lecture format with much room for interaction and the students were required to make submit formal research plans for their operations research projects as well as literature review. The initial results...

This presentation (in Dutch) explains how Teaching Assistants are used as integral part of the teaching staff in project-based learning at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology.

� Abstract— In a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum in engineering, students work together as a project team. By doing that they have the opportunity to exercise teamwork competencies, like project management and communication skills while studying various engineering topics. In this process feedback is essential in order to stimulate the stud...

Teaching Assistants (TAs) can play a major part in project education, being an extra pair of eyes and hands for the lecturer. TAs are usually senior students and by becoming a TA these students stop being part of the group of students. They become part of the staff and take on part of the responsibility for the learning and grading of fellow studen...

This paper reflects on the importance of alumni for engineering colleges. The paper reflects on the four areas in which educational institutes can benefit from their alumni: (financial) support, academic ranking, role models and curriculum evaluation and development. It is argued that alumni can help institutes to attract more young people to engin...

This paper discusses the results of a one-year experiment of a course on aircraft stress analysis and design in the second year of the BSc phase at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology. The experiment entails an electronic version of a classical reader in wiki format. The reason for this experiment is based on a prac...

It is important that young people who chose to pursue a degree in engineering stick with their choice. Unfortunately students often loose their motivation during their first year. This paper gives an example of how the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University in The Netherlands manages to keep a large number of freshmen motivated and at...

This thesis reports on an alumni study of the Faculty Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology to discover what the impact is of the degree in aerospace engineering on an alumnus' professional success and comment on what are important qualities for aerospace engineers to have in order to differentiate themselves from those with an av...

Although digital learning applications have been available to lecturers for several years, lecturers are still hesitant to intensively use them due to restrictions in time and budget. To help lecturers overcome this hurdle TU Delft offers its lecturers small grants to implement digital learning in their courses through the GRASSROOTS project. One s...

Although digital learning applications have been available to lecturers for several years, they are still hesitant to intensively use these tools due to restrictions in time and budget. To help lecturers overcome this hurdle TU Delft offers its lecturers small grants to implement digital learning in their courses through the GRASSROOTS project[1]....

Peer and self evaluations are an excellent way to monitor and evaluate group skills in project based design work. Their use has become increasingly popular with increase in popularity of project based learning. Peer evaluations allow faculty to differentiate in individual grading of group work and prevent free-riding. This paper makes a distinction...

Teamwork is an important aspect to the engineering profession. Therefore, students in engineering must learn teamwork competencies, like project management and communication skills as part of their training. In many engineering curricula at least part of the learning process is organized in the format of projects. Starting of with authentic problem...

The globalisation of the engineering workplace has elevated the importance of preparing engineering students for an international working environment. This paper reports on the development and results of an international aerospace design exercise, organised for students from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Delft University of Tech...

Aerospace Engineering graduates from Delft University of Technology are very satisfied with their degree when looking back at it. As a general rule they do well in their careers. However there are some key competencies aerospace engineers need to in their job which the alumni felt their degree little to contribute to. Also they feel those skills ar...

As a consequence of the introduction of a new 5-year Bachelor-Master degree programme by the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology the study results for the mandatory Finite Element Analysis course were found to be unsatisfactory and cause a bottleneck in the curriculum. Identifying the underlying problems lead to r...

A recent alumni survey carried out on the alumni of the past 25 years of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology shows that in their professional careers, alumni rate their active and integrated learning experiences on the same par as mathematics and mechanics in terms of their usefulness in their current job irrespec...

Since 1997 the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering in Delft has been running a third year Capstone Design project. In 2002 this project was extended by holding a design exercise in cooperation with Queen’s University in Belfast Northern Ireland. To improve the collaboration in these international teams a series of exercises was designed. As a result o...

Project-based learning by its nature requires a lot of staff efforts in terms of tutoring of the project groups. At the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, traditionally in the first two years of the BSc degree use is made of senior and Master students to take over part of the tutoring role from th...

Until recently teaching in higher education was Teacher-centred. However in the past two decades a shift in teaching is taking place. Teaching is becoming more focussed on the learner by emphasizing the necessary competencies the learner must acquire from the teaching. This paper reports on research into the competencies deemed necessary for Aerosp...

In the second year of the 3-year BSc. course in Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands a course in aircraft structural analysis forms a mandatory part of the curriculum. The course, which can be characterized as a course in thin-walled mechanics of materials applied to aircraft, is traditionally found by students...

An initiative has been under way in restructuring the Aircraft Stress Analysis and Structural Design course at The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology to meet the needs of changing undergraduate educational environment. These changes are the result of: 1. Changes in the students’ study and learning habits, 2. Expect...

Although we all educate engineers with a vision that they can become successful very little research is done into how engineers become successful. What is it exactly that makes one aerospace engineer more successful than another and what consequences does that have for the way we educate engineers? On top of that the new Abet 2000 criteria stat...

This paper is a showcase for an on-going active learning capstone design project in the BSc. programme at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology. In multi-disciplinary teams supervised by tutors from different backgrounds students work towards an Aerospace (related) design. In the exercise students learn about applyi...

The Faculty of Aerospace engineering at the Delft University of Technology aims to supply society with highly qualified engineers. Besides possessing basic engineering skills, graduates should be able to work in multidisciplinary design teams, to communicate effectively and to cooperate with colleagues in projects. To achieve these objectives the f...