Simcock, Alec L (2008) Making Courses Attractive by the Phased Introduction of Industry Problems. In: Book of abstracts: 36th SEFI Annual Conference: Quality assessment, employability and innovation. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Abstract

Attracting students into engineering courses has become quite difficult. We seem to have lost that “WOW!” factor which motivated young people and made them seek out a career in engineering. Engineering is a badly “miss or over used” term in English. Engineering is often not seen as a “profession”. The term has colloquial and epistemological understandings. To many people an engineer is the train driver or the back-street repairer of cars. The plumber with aspirations of grandeur describes himself as a “Sanitation Engineer”. The housewife with a confidence crisis describes herself as a “Domestic Engineer”. This paper describes how the PBL course in Electrical Engineering has been designed to re-introduce that “WOW!” factor by the phased introduction of industry based problems into the curriculum. Personal recommendation and word of mouth are often the most influential advertising concepts and feedback from our current 2nd year students indicates that we are on track for them to get the “Wow! Engineering is exciting and interesting” back into the community

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