Complete thesis - Murdoch University

for professional employment• to practise the art as well as science of SE in a controlled setting• to test the understanding of theory, its connection with application, and develop theoreticalinsight• to deal with incompleteness and ambiguity• to think independently and work co operatively, fostering insight into individual strengthsand weaknesses.The findings of that work inform the decisions made in this cycle. In particular, it appearedthat these opportunities should be made available earlier in the students’ academicexperience.7.1.2 Characteristics of teaching and learningChanges in cohort characteristicsTable 7.1 compares the 2003 RE students (ENG260) with both the cumulative first yearengineering students at Murdoch and with figures reported in Felder and Brent (2005), basedon over twenty studies of undergraduate engineering students.Table 7.1: Learning style of undergraduate engineering students (percentages)and staff (based on Soloman & Felder Index of Learning Styles)Processing Perception Input UnderstandingACT REF SEN INT VIS VER SEQ GLOFelder 64 36 63 37 82 18 60 40(2005)Eng 1st 56 44 63 37 77 23 56 44year (cum)ENG260 75 25 90 10 95 5 75 25Legend: ACT-active; REF-reflective; SEN-sensing; INT-intuitive; VIS-visual; VER-verbal; SEQ-sequential;GLO-globalWhile it can be seen that the learning styles of Murdoch Engineering students (since 1999learning styles data for each Year 1 cohort have been acquired) substantially align with thosereported by Felder – Murdoch engineering students are typical of Engineering students, theRE cohort show a strong(er) bias in each of the dimensions that is dominant for engineers.They are more active, therefore should prefer group work and dislike lectures, more sensing,therefore prefer to learn facts, and solve problems by a well-established process, very strongly277