Sally A Male

• PhD
• Professor and Director Teaching and Learning Lab at University of Melbourne

Engineering education needs to develop the competencies required for engineering work, and attract and retain students from diverse backgrounds. This study investigated the possibility that the perceived importance of competencies is subconsciously influenced by gendered assumptions, and as a consequence, this lowers the status given to stereotypic...

Threshold concepts were introduced nearly 10 years ago by Ray Land and Jan Meyer. This work has spawned four international conferences and hundreds of papers. Although the idea has clearly gained traction in higher education, this sub-field does not yet have a fully fledged research methodology or a strong critical discourse about meth-odology. Thi...

Engineering curricula have expanded in recent decades. In addition to science and technical engineering, they now include several non-technical competencies. This is a trend reinforced by programme accreditation. The authors take the viewpoint that it is important to ensure that graduates have the competencies they will require for their work. The...

CONTEXT Engineering schools have wanted, for decades, to create graduates with high employability skills. While educators have been studying this for a long time, they have been much less successful at delivering employability skills than technical skills. PURPOSE This study examines whether teaching employment-related mindsets as part of skills de...

CONTEXT International students make up a significant portion of engineering education students studying in Australia, contributing diverse perspectives and experiences to the classroom. However, international students often encounter challenges such as cultural differences, language barriers, and feelings of isolation. Reflective writing is recogni...

CONTEXT Amidst today's dynamic landscape, recent graduates and other employees in the engineering industry demand adaptability to flourish in the face of rapid change. This heightened demand underscores the importance of assessing and enhancing the employability of engineering students and graduates, prompting the need for more refined understandi...

Higher-level mathematics courses in upper secondary school serve as a critical filter to future educational courses and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). However, the percentage of senior school students in Australia undertaking higher-level mathematics courses is decreasing. Given that these courses provide studen...

Most students acknowledge shared responsibility, with the university, for their employability development. Many academics use assessments as the main driver for motivating students to learn. At the intersection between employability, assessment and learning, the emergent research question is - what are the mechanisms by which course-based employabi...

Access to interactive, simulated work environments through virtual reality (VR) has potential in teaching safety in design (SiD) to engineering students with reduced risk, cost and inconvenience. However, there is limited understanding of what students learn from immersive VR interventions, or the outcomes from specific learning activities. This st...

Empathy has been identified as a key employability skill for professionals, underlying many skills and attributes anticipated as required by future engineers. The relevance and development of empathy and care as perceived by engineers has been quantitatively described in the USA and Germany using the Empathy and Care Questionnaire (ECQ). Cross-nati...

CONTEXT The academic and career success of engineering students from a variety of disciplines hinges on students' understanding of fundamental engineering mechanics concepts. However, high failure rates of introductory mechanics courses are commonly observed. It is suggested that these are due to students struggling with the threshold concepts-conc...

Engineering relevant work experience is required for graduation with a tertiary engineering qualification from many Australian institutions. This requirement is frequently met by completion of industry placements. A collaborative workshop in 2021 hosted by Engineers Australia with current engineering students and industry supervisors revealed engag...

Early career experiences provide the foundation for career progression and inform career choices and decisions. For women in the engineering profession, positive early career experiences have been linked to persistence and retention within the profession. A recent focus on early careers within engineering has provided insight into early career role...

Empathy and care influence aspects of engineering practice including collaboration and teamwork, stakeholder engagement, and quality of work. Empathy has been identified as a key employability skill for professionals, and is the foundation for many skills and attributes anticipated as required by future engineers. Therefore, the understanding of em...

COVID-19 has shocked the globe since December 2019, with unprecedented international and domestic travel restrictions and self-isolation policies enacted by governments around the world. With lockdown policies in place in hopes of preventing further spread of this disease, there has been a widespread transition into learning and working from home –...

Benefits of industry engagement in engineering education for various stakeholders are well known, but there can be significant obstacles to initiating engagement. Using social capital theory, this study investigated how stakeholders initiate industry engagement in engineering education, and the main barriers from the stakeholders’ perspectives. Sem...

Seven people from four Australian universities (two regional and two research-intensive) formed a faculty learning community (FLC) on employability scholarship. The intersecting methodologies of autoethnography and of hermeneutic phenomenology were used to inquire into the form and substance of the FLC. The four new and novel knowledge outcomes wer...

Australian universities have a remit to produce work-ready graduates and engage students from equity groups. In engineering education, accredited Australian programs commonly respond to Engineers Australia’s required engagement with professional practice by mandating completion of a specified number of hours in work-integrated learning (WIL) placem...

Signal processing is an engineering discipline known to involve abstract and complex concepts. Curriculum development should be informed by an understanding of the most critical and challenging learning in the field. Threshold concept theory and threshold capability theory provide a framework describing the features of the most critical and challen...

Little is known about women engineers’ career advancement, the factors that support their progression, or the role that formal education plays in women engineers’ career advancement. Phenomenological analysis of interviews with women engineers in Australia revealed individual, relational and structural influences acting concurrently and interactive...

A barrier to using head mounted display (HMD) virtual reality (VR) in education is access to hardware for large classes. This paper compares students’ learning when engaging with an HMD VR simulation as the operator and as the observer, to evaluate whether benefits of HMD VR can be achieved without requiring all students to operate the equipment. P...

CONTEXT In Australia practicing engineers are expected to possess a wide range of competencies in accordance with Engineers Australia Competency Standards for Professional Engineers. In the engineering degree program accreditation criteria, Engineers Australia requires that students engage with engineering practice. This has often been through int...

Engineering professionals are expected to conduct their work in an ethical manner. However, students may receive limited instruction on ethics and demonstrate resistance to learning about ethics in practice, contributing to graduates being ill-prepared to face ethical dilemmas in the workplace. This study investigated the nascent learning by engine...

Change in Australian engineering industry has caused difficulty for engineering students to secure placements and engage with engineering practice. Consequently, universities are developing learning modules using digital simulations to expose engineering students to authentic engineering practice as part of their curricula. Many simulations use tec...

Intensive mode teaching involves students attending classes for longer each day and on fewer days than traditionally for a discipline. Threshold concepts and threshold capabilities are the transformative concepts and capabilities that are critical to students' progress. In this chapter we investigated the approaches to teaching and learning that su...

Change in Australian engineering industry has caused difficulty for engineering students to secure placements and engage with engineering practice. Consequently, universities are developing learning modules using digital simulations to expose engineering students to authentic engineering practice as part of their curricula. Many simulations use tec...

Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is embraced in Australian higher education (HE) and is a feature of most Australian HE ‘entry to profession’ engineering education programs accredited by Engineers Australia. Accreditation guidelines articulate the need for curriculum-integrated engagement with professional practice (EPP) and encourage EPP in a separa...

Industry engagement, commonly implemented as a 12 week industry placement during a vacation towards the end of the degree, has traditionally been a provider-mandated component of externally accredited professional engineering degrees in Australia. Such placements are intended to bridge knowledge and capability gaps between academic study and engine...

It is becoming increasingly clear that if we are to address intangible and global problems such as the interconnections of climate change and poverty, all professions, including engineering, must work together to understand and mitigate against their own contributions to these injustices. It is therefore critical to support engineering students to...

ISBN 978-1-76051-845-5 [PDF] ISBN 978-1-76051-846-2 [DOCX] ISBN 978-1-76051-847-9 [PRINT] Virtual work integrated learning for engineering students

OVERVIEW OF WORKSHOP Work integrated learning (WIL) involves students engaging interactively with practice, workplaces, and practitioners to develop employability. WIL is important in engineering education because engineering students often have little understanding of practice. Engineering-related employment has traditionally been the main form of...

CONTEXT Safety in design is an important topic in engineering education for which practical experiences are likely to be beneficial but logistically difficult, and high risk. Virtual reality (VR) offers the possibility for students to learn from an interactive experience without the inconveniences and safety hazards in real site visits. However, on...

CONTEXT Internships, one type of Work Integrated Learning (WIL), are an important part of the development of employability competencies. Research across professions other than engineering has indicated that unpaid internships may be subject to class based privilege and induce financial stress. Educational practices in engineering enabling unpaid in...

Intensive mode teaching (IMT) involves students participating in classes or facilitated learning activities on fewer days and for longer each day than is traditional for the discipline. The mode has been used for many years in disciplines in which classes are structured to accommodate practical experience, such as education and health, and in cours...

Free e-print link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/iSHSYitCQkifUJ6RUIIh/full In this study, we worked with second-year engineering students at an Australian university to examine previously identified threshold concepts within the theoretical framework of Possible Selves. Using workshops as the context for intensive work with students, students...

CONTEXT This study focuses on the student experience of passing through critical transformational thresholds, in a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) unit delivered via intensive mode teaching (IMT) at a research intensive university. We define IMT as facilitated learning activity or classes delivered over fewer days and for longer each day than i...

Women remain severely under-represented in engineering in Australia as in all Western countries. This limits the pool of talent, standpoints and approaches within the profession. Furthermore, this under-representation equates to restriction of the benefits of being an engineer mainly to men. Gendered workplace experiences have been found to contrib...

Intensive mode teaching involves classes on fewer days and for longer on each day than is traditional in the discipline. The mode is used increasingly in universities in Australia. In a national research project, we developed an Intensive Mode Teaching Guide based on a survey of 105 coordinators of intensive mode units at 26 universities, and inves...

An important part of engineering education is learning about engineering practice. For engineering programs to be accredited by Engineers Australia, students must be exposed to practice. The most common way that this criterion is met is through compulsory engineering-related employment - traditionally 12 weeks. Due to increasing student numbers, a...

Engineering educators should motivate and support students in developing not only technical competence but also professional competence including commitment to excellence. We developed an authentic assessment to improve students’ understanding of the importance of ‘perfection’ in engineering – whereby 50% good enough will not be acceptable in indus...

In Australia, final year Bachelor of Engineering students complete an engineering research project. A small number of students (often between four and ten at any one university) elect topics in the field of engineering education. Relative to research in technical engineering, the insulated status of engineering education research can leave these st...

Guide on Intensive Mode Teaching

Service-learning is a common component of many humanitarian engineering education programs. Students engage with external organisations and communities, often spending time intensively, on projects linked to their studies. To help prepare students for substantial service-learning initiatives a dedicated humanitarian engineering course was developed...

This study focuses on the student experience of passing through critical transformatory thresholds, facilitated by intensive mode teaching. Intensive mode teaching (IMT) involves students engaging in facilitated learning activities or classes over longer each day, and over fewer days than is traditional in the discipline. Threshold concept theory a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore: student perceptions of threshold concepts and capabilities in postgraduate business education, and the potential impacts of intensive modes of teaching on student understanding of threshold concepts and development of threshold capabilities. Design/methodology/approach – The student experience of...

Structured Abstract BACKGROUND OR CONTEXT

Threshold concepts are transformative disciplinary concepts. They are critical to students’ progress and often troublesome for students. In this study we explored two potential threshold concepts: namely ‘roles of engineers’ and ‘value of learning’. Adopting a workshop format, the study trialled strategies that might help students overcome these th...

To society’s detriment, women remain under-represented among engineering students and practicing engineers in Australia. Many studies have shown that engineering workplaces have features that are not gender inclusive. Efforts to improve engineering education by increasing industry engagement might therefore also result in non-inclusive student expe...

Introduction. In this chapter we introduce threshold concept theory and present the case for its use in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in engineering education, as an example of how we might consider using theory to develop practice. The process has been developed and tested in engineering at The University of Western Australia, with collabor...

Structured Abstract Recruitment and retention is a key concern for Australian engineering, with indications that 40% of engineering graduates work in other professions rather than in engineering (Tilli & Trevelyan, 2010) and attrition from Australian engineering degrees standing at around 35% (Godfrey & King, 2011). The attrition of students and gr...

This masterclass is based on findings from a study of the gender inclusivity of engineering students’ experiences of workplace learning. To Australian society’s detriment, women are under-represented among professional engineers and leave the engineering workforce at a higher rate than men. Although students at all Australian universities that offe...

These best practice guidelines are an outcome of the project ‘Enhancing Industry Engagement in Engineering Degrees’ led by the Australian Council of Engineering Deans, with a grant from the Australian Government through the National Resources Sector Workforce Strategy. The project has 12 partner universities and also industry partners: Engineers Au...

Continuous improvement of engineering education is achieved through curriculum development, program evaluation, and program accreditation processes. This chapter is based on the view that one of the criteria for design of these should be alignment with the competencies required by engineers in the workplace. The chapter provides an 11-factor compet...

Threshold concept theory is one of the most important recent developments in discipline-based Higher Education research. However, relatively little work has been carried out to date on thresholds to learning of engineering students. This is the first comprehensive study to investigate threshold concepts across first and second year engineering cour...

This paper contributes to understanding of the generic engineering competencies required by engineers graduating in Australia, and to competency theory. The Competencies of Engineering Graduates (CEG) Project was conducted to identify the generic engineering competencies required by engineers graduating in Australia. The methodology adapted a theor...

This paper puts forward the view that engineering educators have a responsibility to prepare graduates for engineering work and careers. The current literature reveals gaps between the competencies required for engineering work and those developed in engineering education. Generic competencies feature in these competency gaps. Literature suggests t...

Engineering education in Australia continues to evolve. Trends include changes to course structures, introduction of non-traditional teaching methods, and increasing emphasis on development of non-technical competencies such as teamwork, communication skills, ethics, and skills for life-long learning. This study asks, “Are current changes to engine...

To inform continuous improvement of engineering education, this study asks, "What are the generic engineering competencies that engineers graduating in Australia require?" Competencies that were likely to be important to engineering work were identified from a broad range of literature. These were rated by 300 "established engineers" for importance...

A study was conducted to identify and select the competencies needed by engineers. Competencies were identified from a broad range of literature and refined to a list of 64 competencies which might be required by engineers. Three hundred established engineers, that is, engineers with five to twenty years of experience since graduating from a degree...

Engineering academics have a responsibility to continuously improve the educational experience of their students. One approach is to identify the critical thresholds that students need to pass through. As part of an international project, we are using threshold concept theory to improve engineering education. Threshold concepts are transformative i...

A method of introducing first year students to rights and responsibilities related to Equal Opportunity, Harassment and Discrimination is described. The introduction is included in orientation for students at the Western Australian School of Mines and Art students at Curtin and is now a compulsory lecture in a first year unit in the Schools of Comp...

The context, curriculum and pedagogies of engineering education in Australia have transformed in the last two decades, particularly since the release of the 1996 Review of Engineering Education by the Institution of Engineers Australia (now known as Engineers Australia). As in other countries, Australia has adopted outcomes-based approaches across...

In 2009 the University of Western Australia announced a transition to a new Bologna-style ("3+2") course structure, and began planning for implementation in 2012. In this structure, professional qualifications such as engineering would be completed in a two year masters programme, following an undergraduate programme that balances depth with breadt...

This study investigates the influence of gender typing on the status of engineering competencies. It uses responses from two surveys. Participants in the first survey did not need to generalise and their responses were considered to be relatively stereotype free. However, participants in the second survey did need to generalise and therefore their...