The overarching aim of this project is to bring together European academic, industrial and professional chemical engineering body representatives to develop an assessment framework evaluating the effectiveness of core chemical engineering and employability competency delivery. Although the focus of this project will be in the area of engineering, the concepts and approaches will be applicable to all fields in higher education.
To achieve this aim, the consortium sets out the following objectives:
- Review the learning outcomes of a chemical engineering higher education formation (as set out by the Bologna recommendations and professional accreditation requirements), in consultation between industrial and academic partners. (WP2)
- Promote closer involvement of employer organisations in chemical engineering curriculum formation by carrying out focus groups and semi-structured interviews with associated industrial network partners, as well as questionnaire surveys of wider labour market representatives, to identify the skill gaps and requirements. (WP2)
- Establish state-of-the art in assessing the effectiveness of teaching of core (chemical) engineering knowledge and of the development of professional skills and competencies required to increase the employability of the graduates. (WP2)
- Define various indicators of the effectiveness of teaching in chemical engineering higher education, share them with the community to help HE institutions to improve their formations both in chemical engineering as well as broader subject areas. (WP3)
- Investigate in more depth methods of effectively acquiring employability competencies, using psychometric approaches amongst others. (WP3)
- Use decision making technology and multiobjective optimisation to identify the most appropriate evaluation methods and develop a robust framework for supporting effective delivery of core knowledge and employability competencies. (WP3)
- Test the framework at partner institutions focusing on various pedagogic methodologies (e.g. recorded instruction material used for directed learning, problem based learning, work based learning, tutorial and traditional lecture delivery as well as practical laboratory instruction) in each geographical area to enable the investigation of dependencies between educational systems and the effectiveness of pedagogic methodologies. (WP4)
- Report the outcomes through international pedagogical journals, conferences and communication networks of associated professional bodies. (WP6)
- Promote wider exploitation of the assessment framework via a network of associated academic partners. (WP7)