General Engineering Competency Frameworks: Adapting for a Future of Learning Technologies

The original goal of this PhD was to explore new value propositions for systems engineering education using digital and game-based instructional tools. A second goal emerged during this work concerned with lowering the resistance among educators at research-based universities to engage in novel instructional design. Informed by the first goal and inspired by the second, this study charts the emergence of a concept for a collaborative design tool to aid instructional innovation in engineering education. The resulting artefact, The Instructional Product Systems (IPS) Board, is inspired by the movement in template-based collaborative tools.

This study is a design led research project and emerges within a pragmatic paradigm. The methods are drawn from the Agile toolbox, and from Practice-based and Design Science Research. The thesis is structured as a thesis by papers and is a composite of five parts: perspectives, instructional design, design frameworks, benchmarking, and futures.

Part A, Perspectives, presents a paper that is a combined literature search and case study about virtual reality in (bio)chemical engineering education. It debates that students are graduating from process-oriented engineering programmes without adequate hands-on experience. It charts the current state of the art in instructional virtual reality tools and concludes that mixed reality user interfaces need to be built upon mathematical models that facilitate a learning experience that more closely corresponds with a live experience. The study also attempts to identify bottlenecks in the adoption of VR tools within (bio)chemical engineering education by exploring some of the social and economic dimensions of the learning environment.

Part B, Instructional Design, presents three papers, one each for three instructional design projects. The first of these instructional designs relates to a virtual reality tool to support pilot plant training. The focus of this paper is to explore the impact of shifting from paper-based to eXtended Reality teaching tools. The paper demonstrates that this shift results in a change where students move from activities that involve conceptualising and rationalizing to activities that involve exploring and constructing. The second and third papers relate to boardgames, the first of which introduces engineers to quantum circuits, and the second, which introduces students to the principles of user interface design. In these latter studies, we begin to probe the prospects for peer learning in simulated environments. With only two studies and a limited amount of testing, still, we propose a hypothesis about the different value propositions of boardgames for learners at different stages of skills acquisition.

Part C, Design Frameworks, contains two studies. The first proposes a strategy for engineering departments looking to design eXtended Reality instructional tools. The second introduces an artefact, the Instructional Product Systems (IPS) Board, via the design process for which the artefact was realised. In constructing this artefact, a range of learning, teaching and design theories were consulted. These theories were harnessed to mediate the suitability of different instructional mediums to support the development of specific engineering competencies. Consistent with a pragmatic paradigm, this study implies that the selected theories are useful for their intended purpose. The quality of the current design iteration is tested by using the artefact to evaluate three VR design options for a Pilot Plant training tool.

Part D, Comparative Analysis, endeavours to demonstrate the novelty and value of the IPS Board. In this manuscript, the artefact is benchmarked against the Passow Portrait for generic engineering competencies, and by extension against the accreditation framework known as ABET. This benchmarking activity illustrates several distinctions about The IPS Board. Unlike the Passow Portrait and frameworks ABET and EUR ACE, the IPS board is a non-linear relational framework that differentiates between learning tasks, approaches, and motivations. It maps competencies according to their relationships with other variables such as the nature of the learning (cognitive or embedded) and the learning activity (embodied or social). Further, this mapping Is the foundation for several use cases that can be applied in curriculum and syllabus design.

Finally, Part E, Futures, presents two papers. The first leverages a strategic systems approach to explore University contexts. Specifically, we use aspects of the six pillars method for Futuring and the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) to explore the role of Teachers at research led universities. Traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ universities continue to possess an advantageous position within the education and training landscape. However, the current practice of hiring a faculty member to carry out the role of both teacher and researcher is based on a historical ideal that may no longer be optimal. If true, this sub-optimal set up will challenge the ability of research-led universities to continue to offer state of the art education. The final paper in this section, and in this thesis, discusses the prospects for designing education for emerging technologies. Emerging technologies are distinct form established technologies and this paper concludes by suggesting that imagination needs to be embraced as a way forward.