Motivations and Learning Outcomes: The Profile of Professional Engineering Doctorates

Abstract

The development of the economy calls for large numbers of high-quality engineering talents, who can stand in the forefront of science and technology, and lead the transformation of technological advances into applications. Despite the call to diversify the training of Philosophy Doctors (Ph.D.s) to prepare them for multiple career paths, Ph.D. training still remains as the main venue for the training of high-level academic talents. To produce more application-oriented engineers, an increasing number of professional engineering doctorate degree programs (awarding Engineering Doctor degrees, Eng.D.) emerged, targeting to training high-level innovative and application-oriented talents. Based on different training purposes, the motivations and expectations of an Engineering Doctor degree are different. These will affect students' engagements and learning outcomes, especially part-time students. Focusing on a leading Chinese research intensive university H, this work-in-progress examines part-time professional engineering doctorates' motivations and expectations of their program and learning outcomes during the program. A questionnaire and follow-up one-on-one interviews were used to collect data. Preliminary findings suggested that the main motivation of part-time doctoral students was to improve theoretical knowledge and professional competence. Meanwhile, part-time doctoral students' understanding of basic knowledge and cutting-edge knowledge in the engineering field had increased significantly. This study provides an understanding of the motivations and learning outcomes of these part-time engineering doctorate students. Practical suggestions will be proposed for improving the training system for engineering doctorates.