Student reactions to the development of professional engineering competencies

Abstract

The ability of Engineering graduates to function as successful professionals depends not only on technical disciplinary knowledge but also on a wide range of professional competencies. Students’ often react differently to educators attempts to develop professional competencies compared to technical competencies. Understanding the nature of these reactions is important if we are to design the most effective educational approaches to the development of professional competencies. In this paper we report on an exploratory factor analysis that used data from a detailed survey of students (N = 339) to identify underlying factors that provide insights to understand the variations in student reactions. A set of five factors were identified from this analysis: capability; learning experience; learning outcomes; employment experience; environment. Two of these factors (learning experience and environment) also exhibited significant differences in the impact between professional and technical competencies. A number of implications for educational design were explored.